Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin

Winthrop, a pudgy black man with short hair and a thin mustache, his eyes rimmed with red, didn’t look up from his book as Rakkim walked in. “Howdy.”

Rakkim nodded. He could hear the steady thumping of the generator outside.

Leo closed the door after him, coughing, holding a handkerchief over his mouth.

“Got particle masks for twenty-five dollars,” said Winthrop, perched behind the register, still reading. “Filters are five dollars each. Last about a half hour.” He wrote a note in the margin of the book. “Won’t do you much good in the coal fields, but it will make walking around town more tolerable.”

Leo stayed bent over, gasping.

“Mr. Winthrop, we’re friends of your cousin Bill Tigard,” said Rakkim. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Winthrop put the dog-eared paperback down. A Short History of Space and Time.

“Bill and Florence…the boys, they’re all dead,” said Rakkim. “I’m really sorry. Sorrier than I can express.”

Winthrop showed no emotion, his face a mask holding itself together by sheer force of will. “Raiders?”

“The Colonel’s men burned them out. Murdered them as they tried to escape.”

Winthrop cocked his head. “That doesn’t sound right. What business did the Colonel have with Bill?”

“They were looking for us,” Rakkim said softly. “Me and Leo here.”

Winthrop stared at him. “You said you were his friend. Well…Bill was always a poor judge of character.” He turned away, looked out the soot-grimed windows, and watched the smoke whirl down the street. “I haven’t seen or talked to Bill in over ten years. Hardly know what we argued about now…except it seemed important at the time.” He cleared his throat, spit a black wad into a tissue. “You come all this distance just to tell me the news. That’s a long way, even for a guilty man.”

“I’m here because I need a favor,” said Rakkim.

“Of course you do,” said Winthrop.

“I’m looking for the Church of the Mists. I thought you could help me.”

“Mister, only reason anybody comes to Addington is to be able to tell their friends that they looked for the Church of the Mists. Everybody searching for that miracle. We get all kinds of college kids and Bible study groups, sometimes soldiers trying to prove to each other how brave they are. Even got a few politicians. Desperate ones, mostly, fearful of the next election and with good cause. They all come to Addington, and they all rent breathing masks and safety gear, go out for twenty minutes or so, and then run back hacking up filth and filled with ghost stories about how close they got. Just another few feet, that’s what they say. I was so close…yap yap yap. Of course, that’s the ones that do make it back. Plenty of them don’t. Least a dozen this year alone. That’s why there’s a five-hundred-dollar deposit on the gear. Take it from me, mister, hardly nobody ever reached the Church of the Mists and lived to tell about it.”

“Malcolm Crews did,” said Rakkim.

Winthrop looked surprised. Nodded. “He was the only one. Couple years ago, and the fire’s gotten even worse since then. Credit where credit is due, though. He did it. Showed me the proof and everything. People look for the church because they think it will change them. Heal them or something. Well, Malcolm Crews found the church, but it didn’t do him much good. Turned him clear inside out.”

“He’s a warlord now up in Tennessee,” said Rakkim. “Leader of a bunch called the End-Times Army.”

“Yup,” said Winthrop. “Crazier than a shithouse rat, just like I said.”

“Is the church really surrounded by fire?” said Leo. “A wall of fire, yet it doesn’t burn?”

“That’s right,” said Winthrop. “I attended services there when I was a boy. Nice little church. Nothing fancy, but filled with the Holy Spirit. Addington was a good town, full of God-fearing people making honest wages in the mines. Then the coal fields caught fire and that was that. Tried for years to put it out, but nothing worked. Air just got worse and worse, until everybody up and left.”

“Not you, though.” Leo still held the handkerchief to his face. “Why did you stay?”

“This is my home,” said Winthrop.

“Can’t be healthy,” said Leo. “Emphysema, lung cancer-”

“I was born here,” said Winthrop. “That so hard for you to understand?”

“You’re sure Malcolm Crews found the church?” said Rakkim. “It wasn’t just a tall tale?”

Winthrop’s thick fingers clenched the counter. “My daddy helped build that church, mister. I was baptized in that church. The front doorknob was special made. Silver, to keep out the devil, and with a raised Jesus on the cross for extra protection. Malcolm Crews stumbled back that day, no safety gear at all, face blistered, tongue swollen so big he could hardly talk, and he had a brand of that crucifix burned into the palm of his right hand from where he threw open the door.” He looked at Leo. “The church doesn’t burn, it’s under God’s own protection, but that silver doorknob, it gets hotter than blazes.”

“Mr. Winthrop…I’d like your help in finding the church,” said Rakkim. “You know where the church is. You must know how to get there.”

“I know where the church was, but everything’s different now. You can’t just stroll out there. On the best day, with the wind just right, you’ll still be blind five minutes in and there’s nobody to come get you when you lose your way.”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said Rakkim. “You want the man who murdered your cousin and his family to die for his crimes, then help me find the church, and I’ll do the rest. You want me to pay for getting them killed, then send me into the smoke with bad directions. Either way, you win.”

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” said Winthrop. “According to the Good Book anyway.”

“The Good Book also says the Lord works in mysterious ways, so you just sit back and let me do what I intend to, Mr. Winthrop. Think of me as one of those mysterious ways the Lord was talking about.”

Winthrop chewed on the idea. “I lied before,” he said finally. “Bill was a good judge of character. Too good. That…that’s what we fought over. I was a lesser man in those days. He was right about me then, I imagine he was right about you being worthy of his friendship too. If you’re bound and determined to find the church…I’ll do what I can.”

An hour later, Rakkim was lost in clouds of billowing black smoke, his respirator kept clogging, and twice he had broken through a thin crust of soil, flames boiling up around him. The radio connection with Winthrop failed within five minutes, just as Winthrop said it would. Even wearing two-inch asbestos boot protectors, his feet ached from the heat. He kept walking, one hand reaching forward, one hand out to the side-blindman’s bluff, seeking the house of the Lord.

The ground was uneven, vegetation blackened, crumbling to dust under his steps. A few gnarled trees remained, leaves gone, but no insects, no birds, no animal life. Just Rakkim, sweating, his clothes soaked. The smoke thinned out slightly along the ground, but the air there was even more toxic, coal gas seeping from the earth. He had no idea how Malcolm Crews had survived, let alone found the church and returned. Touched by the hand of God or the devil himself, that’s what Winthrop had said. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Rakkim banged out the filter of the respirator, coughing, eyes and nose burning. He stumbled, fell to one knee and cut himself on something…a broken bottle. Orange Nehi. Knee bleeding now, he walked on. Hot wind on his face, flames in the distance, the smoke rippling in the greasy light. The wind howled, shrieking as fire erupted from the earth, a pillar of flame, fire spreading. He stepped back. Stepped around, patting at the eddies of smoke. Taking the long way around.