The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

  Brother Fred listened to all this without blinking an eye, as if seeing Calhoun talk was as amazing as seeing a frog sing. He said. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Tomorrow you start to work.”

  “I don’t want no fucking job,” Calhoun said.

  “Goodnight, children,” Brother Fred said, and with that he closed the door and they heard it lock, loud and final as the clicking of the drop board on a gallows.

  6

  At dawn, Wayne got up and took a leak, went to the window to look out. The stage where the monks had played and the nun had jumped was empty. The skeletal shapes he had seen last night were tracks and frames from rides long abandoned. He had a sudden vision of Jesus and his disciples riding a roller coaster, their long hair and robes flapping in the wind.

  The large crucified Jesus looked unimpressive without its lights and night’s mystery, like a whore in harsh sunlight with makeup gone and wig askew.

  “Got any ideas how we’re gonna get out of here?” Calhoun asked.

  Wayne looked at Calhoun. He was sitting on the bed, pulling on his boots.

  Wayne shook his head.

  “I could use a smoke. You know, I think we ought to work together. Then we can try to kill each other.”

  Unconsciously, Calhoun touched his ear where Wayne had bitten off the lobe.

  “Wouldn’t trust you as far as I could kick you,” Wayne said.

  “I hear that. But I give my word. And my word’s something you can count on. I won’t twist it.”

  Wayne studied Calhoun, thought: Well, there wasn’t anything to lose. He’d just watch his ass.

  “All right,” Wayne said. “Give me your word you’ll work with me on getting us out of this mess, and when we’re good and free, and you say your word has gone far enough, we can settle up.”

  “Deal,” Calhoun said, and offered his hand. Wayne looked at it.

  “This seals it,” Calhoun said.

  Wayne took Calhoun’s hand and they shook.

  7

  Moments later the door unlocked and a smiling monk with hair the color and texture of mold fuzz came in with Brother Fred, who still had his pump shotgun. There were two dead folks with them. A man and a woman. They wore torn clothes and the mouse-ear hats. Neither looked long dead or smelled particularly bad. Actually, the monks smelled worse.

  Using the barrel of the shotgun, Brother Fred poked them down the hall to a room with metal tables and medical instruments.

  Brother Lazarus was on the far side of one of the tables. He was smiling. His nose looked especially cancerous this morning. A white pustule the size of a thumb tip had taken up residence on the left side of his snout, and it looked like a pearl onion in a turd.

  Nearby stood a nun. She was short with good, if skinny, legs, and she wore the same outfit as the nun on the bus. It looked more girlish on her, perhaps because she was thin and small-breasted. She had a nice face, and eyes that were all pupil. Wisps of blond hair crawled out around the edges of her headgear.

  She looked pale and weak, as if wearied to the bone. There was a birthmark on her right cheek that looked like a distant view of a small bird in flight.

  “Good morning,” Brother Lazarus said. “I hope you gentlemen slept well.”

  “What’s this about work?” Wayne said.

  “Work?” Brother Lazarus said.

  “I described it to them that way,” Brother Fred said. “Perhaps an impulsive description.”

  “I’ll say,” Brother Lazarus said. “No work here, gentlemen. You have my word on that. We do all the work. Lie on these tables and we’ll take a sampling of your blood.”

  “Why?” Wayne said.

  “Science,” Brother Lazarus said. “I intend to find a cure for this germ that makes the dead come back to life, and to do that, I need living human beings to study. Sounds kind of mad scientist, doesn’t it? But I assure you, you’ve nothing to lose but a few drops of blood. Well, maybe more than a few drops, but nothing serious.”

  “Use your own goddamn blood,” Calhoun said.

  “We do. But we’re always looking for fresh specimens. Little here, little there. And if you don’t do it, we’ll kill you.”

  Calhoun spun and hit Brother Fred on the nose. It was a solid punch and Brother Fred hit the floor on his butt, but he hung onto the shotgun and pointed it up at Calhoun. “Go on,” he said, his nose streaming blood. “Try that again.”

  Wayne flexed to help, but hesitated. He could kick Brother Fred in the head from where he was, but that might not keep him from shooting Calhoun, and there would go the extra reward money. And besides, he’d given his word to the bastard that they’d try to help each other survive until they got out of this.

  The other monk clasped his hands and swung them into the side of Calhoun’s head, knocking him down. Brother Fred got up, and while Calhoun was trying to rise, he hit him with the stock of the shotgun in the back of the head, hit him so hard it drove Calhoun’s forehead into the floor. Calhoun rolled over on his side and lay there, his eyes fluttering like moth wings.

  “Brother Fred, you must learn to turn the other cheek,” Brother Lazarus said. “Now put this sack of shit on the table.”

  Brother Fred checked Wayne to see if he looked like trouble. Wayne put his hands in his pockets and smiled.

  Brother Fred called the two dead folks over and had them put Calhoun on the table. Brother Lazarus strapped him down.

  The nun brought a tray of needles, syringes, cotton and bottles over, put it down on the table next to Calhoun’s head. Brother Lazarus rolled up Calhoun’s sleeve and fixed up a needle and stuck it in Calhoun’s arm, drew it full of blood. He stuck the needle through the rubber top of one of the bottles and shot the blood into that.

  He looked at Wayne and said, “I hope you’ll be less trouble.”

  “Do I get some orange juice and a little cracker afterwards?” Wayne said.

  “You get to walk out without a knot on your head,” Brother Lazarus said.

  “Guess that’ll have to do.”

  Wayne got on the table next to Calhoun and Brother Lazarus strapped him down. The nun brought the tray over and Brother Lazarus did to him what he had done to Calhoun. The nun stood over Wayne and looked down at his face. Wayne tried to read something in her features but couldn’t find a clue.

  When Brother Lazarus was finished he took hold of Wayne’s chin and shook it. “My, but you two boys look healthy. But you can never be sure. We’ll have to run the blood through some tests. Meantime, Sister Worth will run a few additional tests on you, and,” he nodded at the unconscious Calhoun, “I’ll see to your friend here.”

  “He’s no friend of mine,” Wayne said.

  They took Wayne off the table, and Sister Worth and Brother Fred, and his shotgun, directed him down the hall into another room.

  The room was lined with shelves that were lined with instruments and bottles. The lighting was poor, most of it coming through a slatted window, though there was an anemic yellow bulb overhead. Dust motes swam in the air.

  In the center of the room on its rim was a great, spoked wheel. It had two straps well spaced at the top, and two more at the bottom. Beneath the bottom straps were blocks of wood. The wheel was attached in back to an upright metal bar that had switches and buttons all over it.

  Brother Fred made Wayne strip and get on the wheel with his back to the hub and his feet on the blocks. Sister Worth strapped his ankles down tight, then he was made to put his hands up, and she strapped his wrists to the upper part of the wheel.

  “I hope this hurts a lot,” Brother Fred said.

  “Wipe the blood off your face,” Wayne said. “It makes you look silly.”

  Brother Fred made a gesture with his middle finger that wasn’t religious and left the room.

  8

  Sister Worth touched a switch and the wheel began to spin, slowly at first, and the bad light came through the windows and poked through the rungs and the dust swam before his eyes and the wh
eel and its spokes threw twisting shadows on the wall.

  As he went around, Wayne closed his eyes. It kept him from feeling so dizzy, especially on the down swings.

  On a turn up, he opened his eyes and caught sight of Sister Worth standing in front of the wheel staring at him. He said, “Why?” and closed his eyes as the wheel dipped.

  “Because Brother Lazarus says so,” came the answer after such a long time Wayne had almost forgotten the question. Actually, he hadn’t expected a response. He was surprised that such a thing had come out of his mouth, and he felt a little diminished for having asked.

  He opened his eyes on another swing up, and she was moving behind the wheel, out of his line of vision. He heard a snick like a switch being flipped and lightning jumped through him and he screamed in spite of himself. A little fork of electricity licked out of his mouth like a reptile tongue tasting air.

  Faster spun the wheel and the jolts came more often and he screamed less loud, and finally not at all. He was too numb. He was adrift in space wearing only his cowboy hat and boots, moving away from earth very fast. Floating all around him were wrecked cars. He looked and saw that one of them was his ‘57, and behind the steering wheel was Pop. Sitting beside the old man was a Mexican. Two more were in the back seat. They looked a little drunk.

  One of the whores in back pulled up her dress and cocked it high up so he could see her pussy. It looked like that needed a shave.

  He smiled and tried to go for it, but the ‘57 was moving away, swinging wide and turning its tail to him. He could see a face at the back window. Pop’s face. He had crawled back there and was waving slowly and sadly. A whore pulled Pop from view.

  The wrecked cars moved away too, as if caught in the vacuum of the ‘57’s retreat. Wayne swam with his arms, kicked with his legs, trying to pursue the ‘57 and the wrecks. But he dangled where he was, like a moth pinned to a board. The cars moved out of sight and left him there with his arms and legs stretched out, spinning amidst an infinity of cold, uncaring stars.

  “…how the tests are run…marks everything about you…charts it…EKG, brain waves, liver…everything…it hurts because Brother Lazarus wants it to… thinks I don’t know these things…that I’m slow…slow, not stupid…smart really…used to be scientist…before the accident…Brother Lazarus is not holy…he’s mad…made the wheel because of the Holy Inquisition…knows a lot about the Inquisition…thinks we need it again…for the likes of men you… the unholy, he says… But he just likes to hurt…I know.”

  Wayne opened his eyes. The wheel had stopped. Sister Worth was talking in her monotone, explaining the wheel. He remembered asking her, “Why” about three thousand years ago.

  Sister Worth was staring at him again. She went away and he expected the wheel to start up, but when she returned, she had a long, narrow mirror under her arm. She put it against the wall across from him. She got on the wheel with him, her little feet on the wooden platforms beside his. She hiked up the bottom of her habit and pulled down her black panties. She put her face close to his, as if searching for something.

  “He plans to take your body…piece by piece…blood, cells, brain, your cock…all of it… He wants to live forever.”

  She had her panties in her hand, and she tossed them. Wayne watched them fly up and flutter to the floor like a dying bat.

  She took hold of his dick and pulled on it. Her palm was cold and he didn’t feel his best, but he began to get hard. She put him between her legs and rubbed his dick between her thighs. They were as cold as her hands, and dry.

  “I know him now…know what he’s doing…the dead germ virus…he was trying to make something that would make him live forever…it made the dead come back…didn’t keep the living alive, free of old age…”

  His dick was throbbing now, in spite of the coolness of her body.

  “He cuts up dead folks to learn…experiments on them…but the secret of eternal life is with the living…that’s why he wants you…you’re an outsider… those who live here he can…test…but he must keep them alive to do his bidding…not let them know how he really is… needs your insides and the other man’s…he wants to be a God…flies high above us in a little plane and looks down… Likes to think he is the creator, I bet…”

  “Plane?”

  “Ultralight.”

  She pushed his cock inside her, and it was cold and dry in there, like liver left overnight on a drainboard. Still, he found himself ready. At this point, he would have gouged a hole in a turnip.

  She kissed him on the ear and alongside the neck; cold little kisses, dry as toast.

  “…thinks I don’t know… But I know he doesn’t love Jesus… He loves himself, and power… He’s sad about his nose…”

  “I bet.”

  “Did it in a moment of religious fervor…before he lost the belief… Now he wants to be what he was… A scientist. He wants to grow a new nose… know how…saw him grow a finger in a dish once…grew it from the skin off a knuckle of one of the brothers… He can do all kinds of things.”

  She was moving her hips now. He could see over her shoulder into the mirror against the wall. Could see her white ass rolling, the black habit hiked up above it, threatening to drop like a curtain. He began to thrust back, slowly, firmly.

  She looked over her shoulder into the mirror, watching herself fuck him. There was a look more of study than rapture on her face.

  “Want to feel alive,” she said. “Feel a good, hard dick… Been too long.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Wayne said. “This ain’t the most romantic of spots.”

  “Push so I can feel it.”

  “Nice,” Wayne said. He gave it everything he had. He was beginning to lose his erection. He felt as if he were auditioning for a job and not making the best of impressions. He felt like a knothole would be dissatisfied with him.

  She got off of him and climbed down.

  “Don’t blame you,” he said.

  She went behind the wheel and touched some things on the upright. She mounted him again, hooked her ankles behind his. The wheel began to turn. Short electrical shocks leaped through him. They weren’t as powerful as before. They were invigorating. When he kissed her it was like touching his tongue to a battery. It felt as if electricity was racing through his veins and flying out the head of his dick; he felt as if he might fill her with lightning instead of come.

  The wheel creaked to a stop; it must have had a timer on it. They were upside down and Wayne could see their reflection in the mirror; they looked like two lizards fucking on a window pane.

  He couldn’t tell if she had finished or not, so he went ahead and got it over with. Without the electricity he was losing his desire. It hadn’t been an A-one piece of ass, but hell, as Pop always said, “Worse pussy I ever had was good.”

  “They’ll be coming back,” she said. “Soon… Don’t want them to find us like this…Other tests to do yet.”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “I want out of the order… Want out of this desert… I want to live… And I want you to help me.”

  “I’m game, but the blood is rushing to my head and I’m getting dizzy. Maybe you ought to get off me.”

  After an eon she said, “I have a plan.”

  She untwined from him and went behind the wheel and hit a switch that turned Wayne upright. She touched another switch and he began to spin slowly, and while he spun and while lightning played inside him, she told him her plan.

  9

  “I think ole Brother Fred wants to fuck me,” Calhoun said. “He keeps trying to get his finger up my asshole.”

  They were back in their room. Brother Fred had brought them back, making them carry their clothes, and now they were alone again, dressing.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Wayne said. “The nun, Sister Worth, she’s going to help.”

  “What’s her angle?”

  “She hates this place and wants my dick. Mostly, she hates this place.”
/>
  “What’s the plan?”

  Wayne told him first what Brother Lazarus had planned. On the morrow he would have them brought to the room with the steel tables, and they would go on the tables, and if the tests had turned out good, they would be pronounced fit as fiddles and Brother Lazarus would strip the skin from their bodies, slowly, because according to Sister Worth he liked to do it that way, and he would drain their blood and percolate it into his formulas like coffee, cut their brains out and put them in vats and store their veins and organs in freezers.

  All of this would be done in the name of God and Jesus Christ (Eees num be prased) under the guise of finding a cure for the dead folks germ. But it would all instead be for Brother Lazarus who wanted to have a new nose, fly his ultralight above Jesus Land, and live forever.

  Sister Worth’s plan was this:

  She would be in the dissecting room. She would have guns hidden. She would make the first move, a distraction, then it was up to them.

  “This time,” Wayne said, “one of us has to get on top of that shotgun.”

  “You had your finger up your ass in there today, or we’d have had them.”

  “We’re going to have surprise on our side this time. Real surprise. They won’t be expecting Sister Worth. We can get up there on the roof and take off in that ultralight. When it runs out of gas we can walk, maybe get back to the ‘57 and hope it runs.”

  “We’ll settle our score then. Whoever wins keeps the car and the split tail. As for tomorrow, I’ve got a little ace.”

  Calhoun pulled on his boots. He twisted the heel of one of them. It swung out and a little knife dropped into his hand. “It’s sharp,” Calhoun said. “I cut a Chinaman from gut to gill with it. It was easy as sliding a stick through fresh shit.”

  “Been nice if you’d had that ready today.”

  “I wanted to scout things out first. And to tell the truth, I thought one pop to Brother Fred’s mouth and he’d be out of the picture.”

  “You hit him in the nose.”

  “Yeah, goddamn it, but I was aiming for his mouth.”

  10

  Dawn and the room with the metal tables looked the same. No one had brought in a vase of flowers to brighten the place.