David Koepp - Cold Storage

Without answering her, he shoved the flashlight in his pants pocket, still switched on and with the beam pointing upward so it could light her way. With both hands free, he’d move a lot faster.

They continued down.

After Mooney had thrown up onto the gravel behind the tailpipe, after he’d hacked and spit and blown his nose till it was raw inside, after he’d used the dirty beach towel from the back seat to clean every speck of cat gut off his face, he was able to think straight. Sort of. He couldn’t get a handle on the whole thing, because it was ungraspable, but he’d at least managed to calm his breathing and get his heart rate down to almost normal levels, and to stop squealing “God, Jesus, oh Jesus, God, what the fuck,” or close variations thereof, every few seconds.

As soon as he was clean, a powerful thirst overtook him, and he was relieved to see the lone remaining wine cooler was still mostly full, the cap only loosened in the moment before he hit the deer. He picked it up out of the Exotic Berry puddle it had made on the passenger-side floor mat and finished it in one long gulp. It was warm now, which made the liquor feel stronger, and stronger was what he needed. A little courage washed through his brain, a familiar feeling, but different too. He could feel himself becoming stronger, calmer, better.

He was also becoming a walking dispersal mechanism for Cordyceps novus. Mooney was the twenty-eighth human being to be infected by the fungus, but there was an important difference between him and the others. Bartles & Jaymes, like many wine coolers and wine products in general, uses the maximum amount of sulfur dioxide permitted by FDA regulations as a preservative. SO 2is one of the most effective antimicrobials on the planet and is highly antagonistic to growth. In its gaseous form, SO 2can be lethal to any air-breathing creature and is in fact the leading cause of death in a volcanic eruption. It’s the poison gas that gets you, not the lava.

But in liquid form, and in the right concentration, SO 2can be quite helpful. It not only prevents invasive microbial growth in human digestive systems, but it can actually clean and preserve a glass wine container itself, during both the fermentation and the storage process.

Mooney’s last bottle of Exotic Berry, aside from being tasty and intoxicating, was also a superb growth inhibitor. Whereas the fungus’s takeover of its previous human victims had been a blitzkrieg, in Mooney’s wine-cooler-besotted state, it was more of a slow and steady infantry assault through mud. The invading army of Cordyceps novus was going to win, Mooney was going to lose, but it would take a while.

Having unwittingly bought himself a few extra hours on the planet, he stood back from the car to review the events of the previous couple of hours.

There was a lot to review. The deer had been dead, there was no question about it. Same for Mr. Scroggins; the cat was missing half a face and skull. The notion of him surviving that kind of mutilation was laughable. That could only mean that something otherworldly was going on, something unholy. Whatever. The universe was a fucked-up place, with lots of shit he’d never understand.

But what about me ? Specifically, me, Mooney, where do I stand in all this? What did I really do, after all? Mooney had an analytical mind, sometimes, so he put it to use. What’s the worst that can happen to me? Yes, I hit a deer; yes, I pumped it full of lead; and yes, I killed a sick cat, but none of these were crimes. Burying them on somebody else’s privately owned land probably was, but he hadn’t done that, he hadn’t had a chance. The dead deer had run away, and the half cat climbed a tree and exploded. It’s as simple as that, Officer.

So, Fear of Police could be dismissed. He’d done nothing illegal. That left only Fear of Societal Condemnation and Fear of God. Well, the only way society was going to condemn him was if it knew he was a weirdo and an animal killer, and there was no evidence of that other than whatever was left in the trunk. He edged over to the car, the first time he’d come within six feet of it since its occupants decamped. There were no guts in the empty trunk, that was good, but the deer had bled a fair amount. It had also left some weird green-brown ooze that covered half the floor of the trunk. Must be the shit that comes out of you when you die or something.

Whatever, this could all be cleaned up, this was totally doable. This was a garden hose, a couple of old towels, and maybe twenty minutes of his time. Nobody would ever know. So Fear of Societal Condemnation was off the list too.

Unfortunately, that left the biggie. God knew. God knew all this shit, and He could not possibly be pleased. It wasn’t that Mooney feared for his soul; his personal concept of God was a bit more baroque, more Old Testament. He’d seen enough of life to know that God was big into retribution, and the sicker and more ironic the better. Yes, He was kind and loving, but He also invented colorectal cancer, and is there a supervillain anywhere, ever, who came up with a more diabolical way to take somebody out than that? Don’t bother checking, there isn’t.

Yes, God had most certainly taken note of what Mooney had done tonight, disapproved, and started unleashing His righteous fury. Bringing the innocent creatures back to life to torture him had been step one, spattering his face with offal was step two, and Mooney knew for certain he didn’t want to wait for steps three, four, and five, whatever they might be.

He needed to apologize.

The last time he’d decided he owed God a mea culpa it had cost him almost four years of his life, but he was hoping he could wrap this one up in a couple hours on his knees. St. Benedict’s Abbey on Second Street was open all night, and he’d used it before when he needed to atone. The place was run by actual monks, a Franciscan order, and the black cowled robes conveyed a judgmental asceticism that felt pretty legit. The modish wooden pews couldn’t have been Vatican approved, but there was a granite slab that ran the length of the floor in front of the altar, and Mooney had spent many hours on his knees there, praying for divine forgiveness of one sort or another. The stone was pockmarked and uneven, so after the first five minutes his knees would start to ache, and by the time a full hour had passed he would be in so much pain he couldn’t focus. When his transgression was bad enough, Mooney would stay so long that the skin would grind into the inside of his pants, and when he stood, whole layers of flesh would tear away. By the time he got in the car, the blood would be seeping through the knees of his pants, and that was the sign that he’d done things right and they were square.

Of course, there was the time no amount of penance at the abbey was enough. To all of those prayers, God’s answer had been a consistent “Fuck no.” Half an hour on his knees, to ask for the strength to resist her? No. A full hour on his knees, to ask for forgiveness after he fucked her and, more important, might I please just this one time have a pass on consequences, could she please not be pregnant? Nope. Another two hours, to ask God to guide her with His wisdom and judgment and convince her to marry him? Forget it, asshole. And, finally, he’d spent three days on his knees, coupled with fasting so severe that he’d fainted; he fainted so many times that Brother Dennis had asked him to either stop coming or at least use a kneeler.

But the object of those prayers was vehemently denied as well. The baby did not die in utero, the baby was not stillborn, the baby was healthy and was his daughter, his bastard daughter with Naomi Williams. Though the entire rest of the Snyder family had forgiven him, it was abundantly clear that God in Heaven had not and did not intend to do so for a good long while.