F Wilson - Midnight Mass

She bound his legs tightly together, then grabbed the throw rug he lay upon and dragged him and the rug out to the front porch and down the steps to the red wagon she'd left there. She rolled him off the bottom step into the wagon bed and tied him in place. Then she slipped her arms through the straps of her heavily loaded backpack and she was ready to go. She grabbed the wagon's handle and pulled it down the walk, down the driveway apron, and onto the asphalt. From there on it was smooth rolling.

Sister Carole knew just where she was going. She had the spot all picked out.

She was going to try something a little different tonight.

COWBOYS . . .

Al screamed and sobbed against the gag. If he could just talk to her he knew he could change her mind. But he couldn't get a word past the cloth jammed against his tongue.

And he didn't have long. She had him upside down, strung up by his feet, swaying in the breeze from one of the climbing spikes on a utility pole, and he knew what was coming next. So he pleaded with his eyes, with his soul. He tried mental telepathy.

Sister, Sister, Sister, don't do this! I'm a Catholic! My mother prayed for me every day and it didn't help, hut I'll change now, I promise! I swear on a stack of fuckin bibles I'll be a good boy from now on if you'll just let me go this time!

Then he saw her face in the moonlight and realized with a final icy shock that he was truly a goner. Even if he could make her hear him, nothing he could say was going to change this lady's mind. The eyes were empty. No one was home. The bitch was on autopilot.

When he saw the glimmer of the straight razor as it glided above his throat, there was nothing left to do but wet himself.

CAROLE . . .

When Sister Carole finished vomiting, she sat on the curb and allowed herself a brief cry.

She dragged herself to her feet. She had two more things to do. One of them involved touching the fresh corpse. The second was simpler: starting a fire to attract other cowboys and their masters.

GREGOR . . .

Gregor stood amid his get-guards and watched as cowboy Kenny ran in circles around his dead friend's swaying, upended corpse.

"It's Al! The bastards got Al! I'll kill 'em all! I'll tear 'em to pieces!"

How Gregor wished somebody would do just that. He'd heard about these deaths but this was the first he'd seen—an obscene parody of the bloodletting rituals he and his nightbrothers performed on the cattle. This was acutely embarrassing, especially with Olivia newly arrived from New York.

"Come out here!" Kenny screamed into the darkness. "Come out and fight like men!"

Stan, the head of this posse, was stamping out the brush fire at the base of the utility pole.

"We should be getting back, Gregor," one of his guards whispered. "It's too open out here. Not safe."

All four of them had their pistols drawn and were eyeing the night, their heads rotating back and forth like radar dishes.

Gregor ignored him and called out, "Someone cut him down."

Stan pointed to Kenny. "Climb up there." Hey, no—

"He was your bud," Stan said. "You do it."

Kenny reluctantly climbed the pole.

"I want to let him down easy!" he yelled when he'd reached the rope.

"Just cut the rope," Stan said.

"Dammit, Stan. Al was one of us! I'll cut it slow and you ease him down."

"Oh, fuck, all right," Stan said. "C'mere, Jackie, and help me."

The woman stood back by one of the cars that had brought them all here. Not the fancy convertible the posse had been using recently—Al had apparently taken that for a drive and never come back. She had a bandage around her head over a blackened left eye. Gregor wondered what had happened to her. Beaten by one of her own posse perhaps?

He looked at Jackie and remembered lusting after women for their bodies; now he cared only for the red wine running through them. Sexual lust was a dim memory. He hadn't had an erection since he was turned, seventy years ago.

Blood . . . always blood. Gregor was glad he had supped before accompanying these cowboys to their dead friend.

This made six dead. Two in the past three days. The pace was accelerating. Olivia would be on the warpath.

Jackie shook her head. "No way," she said, her voice faint. "I can't."

"Get your skinny ass over here!"

"He's comin down!" Kenny shouted.

"Damn fuck!" Stan shouted as the body slumped earthward. He reached up to grab it and—

The flash was noonday bright, the blast deafening as the shock wave knocked Gregor to the ground. His first instinct was to leap to his feet again, but he realized he couldn't see. The bright flash had fogged his night vision with a purple, amebic afterimage. He lay quiet until he could see again, then rose to his feet.

He heard wailing sounds. The woman crouched beside the car, screaming hysterically; the cowboy who had climbed the pole lay somewhere in the bushes, crying out about his back, how badly it hurt and how he couldn't move his legs. But the other two—Stan and the murdered Al—were nowhere to be seen.

His get-guards were struggling to their feet, enclosing him in a tight, four-man circle. "Are you all right, Gregor?" one said.

"Of course I'm all right," he snapped. "You wouldn't be asking that question if I weren't."

Gregor shook his head. He tried to choose carefully for his get, emphasizing intelligence. Sometimes they fell short.

Gregor began to brush off his clothes as he looked around, then froze. He was wet, covered with blood and torn flesh. The entire street glistened, littered with bits of bone, muscle, skin, and fingernail-size pieces of internal organs, leaving no way of telling what had belonged to whom.

Gregor shuddered at the prospect of explaining this to Olivia.

His fury exploded. The first killing tonight had been embarrassing enough by itself. But now another cowboy had been taken out, and still another crippled to the point where he'd have to be put down—all right in front of him. This had passed beyond embarrassment into humiliation.

When he caught these vigilantes he'd deal with them personally. And see that it took them days to die.

CAROLE . . .

Sister Carole saw the flash and heard the explosion through the window over the sink in the darkened kitchen of the Bennett house. No joy, no elation. This wasn't fun. But she did find a certain grim satisfaction in learning that her potassium chlorate plastique had worked.

The gasoline had evaporated from the latest batch and she was working with that now. The moon provided sufficient illumination for the final stage. Once she had the right amount measured out, she didn't need much light to pack the plastique into soup cans. All she had to do was make sure she maintained the proper loading density.

That done, she stuck a number-three blasting cap in the end of each cylinder and dipped it into the pot of melted wax she had on the stove. And that did it. She now had waterproof block charges with a detonation velocity comparable to forty-percent-ammonia dynamite.

"All right," she said aloud to the night through her kitchen window.

"You've made my life a living hell. Now it's your time to be afraid."

GREGOR . . .

"Three in one night!"

Olivia's eyes seemed to glow with red fire in the gloom of the Post Office basement. She'd taken up temporary residence in the old granite building.

"They booby-trapped the body." Gregor knew it sounded lame but it was the truth.

Olivia's voice was barely a whisper as she pierced him with her stare. "You've disappointed me, Gregor."

"It is a temporary situation, I assure you."

"So you keep saying, but it has lasted far too long already. The dead serfs total seven now. Seven! Wait till Franco hears!"

Gregor quailed at the thought. "He doesn't have to hear. Not yet."