Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

“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.

“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.”

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

Brother Lazarus’s nose had changed however; there were two pearl onions nestled in it now.

Sister Worth, looking only a little more animated than yesterday, stood nearby. She was holding the tray with the instruments. This time the tray was full of scalpels. The light caught their edges and made them wink.

Brother Fred was standing behind Calhoun, and Brother Mold Fuzz was behind Wayne. They must have felt pretty confident today. They had dispensed with the dead folks.

Wayne looked at Sister Worth and thought maybe things were not good. Maybe she had lied to him in her slow talking way. Only wanted a little dick and wanted to keep it quiet. To do that, she might have promised anything. She might not care what Brother Lazarus did to them.

If it looked like a double cross, Wayne was going to go for it. If he had to jump right into the mouth of Brother Fred’s shotgun. That was a better way to go than having the hide peeled from your body. The idea of Brother Lazarus and his ugly nose leaning over him did not appeal at all.

“It’s so nice to see you,” Brother Lazarus said. “I hope we’ll have none of the unpleasantness of yesterday. Now, on the tables.”

Wayne looked at Sister Worth. Her expression showed nothing. The only thing about her that looked alive was the bent wings of the bird birthmark on her cheek.

All right, Wayne thought, I’ll go as far as the table, then I’m going to do something. Even if it’s wrong.

He took a step forward, and Sister Worth flipped the contents of the tray into Brother Lazarus’s face. A scalpel went into his nose and hung there. The tray and the rest of its contents hit the floor.

Before Brother Lazarus could yelp, Calhoun dropped and wheeled. He was under Brother Fred’s shotgun and he used his forearm to drive the barrel upwards. The gun went off and peppered the ceiling. Plaster sprinkled down.