Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Sweeney pointed to the writing on the wall opposite them.

“You’re their chemist?”

“I’m kind of a freelancer,” the Sheep said. “But I’ve been with these guys a while. They took me in. They really did. Most clients just treat you like the hired help, you know? But not Buzz. He gave me his colors. Set me up with Nadia. They’re good people.”

“You make crank for them?”

The Sheep blew out a long trail of smoke and laughed. He pointed at the wall with his cigarette.

“That look like any kind of crank you ever seen?”

Sweeney stared at the wall through the smoke for a while, then said, “So what is it?”

The Sheep got up on his knees, stubbed the butt into the ground, and crawled to the wall. He made a fist and knocked his knuckles across the line of symbols.

“It’s my goddamned masterpiece is what it is,” he said. “It’s my life’s work.”

“Your notations,” Sweeney said, “are a little unusual.”

“Yeah, well, I use my own shorthand. You think I’m the only one livin’ in these caves?”

The Sheep knee-walked to his little camp and started to tie up his bedroll and stash his tins in his pack.

“What happens now?” Sweeney asked.

“What happens now is you follow me out of here and we go back to Gehenna.”

“And what happens when we get to the factory?”

“Well, first, I’d like to freshen up a little,” the Sheep said.

“I mean,” said Sweeney, “what happens to me?”

The Sheep attached his roll to his pack and slipped it over his shoulders.

“That,” he said, “is for Buzz to say. I can’t speak for Buzz. I wouldn’t even try. But I really hope we get a chance to work together.”

He picked up the lantern, turned and started out of the chamber. It took a second for Sweeney to realize that the Sheep was heading deeper into the caves. He got up and followed.

“What do you mean,” Sweeney said to his back, “work together?”

The Sheep began to move more quickly, passing into and out of chambers, holding the lantern at arm’s length. Sweeney saw writing on every wall they passed. Some of the chambers came alive in Day-Glo as they entered, every inch of rock adorned with letters and numbers, some depicting basic chemical compounds and others simply nonsensical.

“I mean,” the Sheep said finally, a little out of breath, “that I’ve been needing an assistant for a while now. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Nadia tries. But she just doesn’t have the training. But you, being a chemist and all. .”

“I’m not a chemist,” Sweeney said and the Sheep stopped and turned and held the lantern out to look at Sweeney’s face.

“What do you mean,” he said, “you’re not a chemist?”

“I’m a pharmacist,” he said. “Did Buzz tell you I was a chemist?”

The Sheep sniffed, let his head drop toward a shoulder. He stood thinking for a minute, then said, “You’ll be okay,” and began his march again.

And Sweeney followed, unable to think of anything else to do. They wound left and right, through the interlocking chambers, sometimes crouching, sometimes down fully on hands and knees. The Sheep kept an even pace. Sweeney thought he heard sounds, all of them distant and brief. Water running. A shouted name. A crack of thunder. The Sheep gave no indication that he heard anything.

He lost track of time in the cave. He began to think they were revisiting corridors and chambers they’d been through before. He began to think that the Sheep was crazy and that Buzz knew it. That they might walk through this granite maze until both of them dropped. That whatever exits once existed had been blocked and mortared closed by a pack of Abominations. He began to think that maybe this was what it was like for Danny: cold entombment. A maze that emptied, always, back into the same pathways. A web of dark and useless roads that circled into one another until time and space and meaning were all degraded into a blind, exhausting loop.

And then he was following the Sheep down an incline and around a bend. And the walls were widening considerably. And light began to emanate from someplace up ahead. The Sheep turned off his lantern and waited for Sweeney to come level.

“Admit it,” the Sheep said. “You had your doubts.”

Sweeney didn’t know how to answer that. The Sheep took him by the arm and led him to a spacious mouth that emptied onto sand and rock and scrub. They stepped out into the air and Sweeney looked up at the sun and guessed that about an hour had gone by.

“Makes you appreciate the open,” the Sheep said, “doesn’t it?”

Sweeney nodded.

“What’s that song?” the Sheep said. “You know that song? Been through the desert of night . .”

Sweeney shrugged.

“. . Now it’s time for the wine and the friends.”

“Never heard it,” Sweeney said.

The Sheep smiled and handed off the lantern. “It’s a good one. But what I’m saying is, everything gets better from here on in.”

He walked about twenty yards and Sweeney thought he was looking for a place to take a piss. Instead, he pulled a bike from beneath a pile of bramble and walked it back to the mouth of the cave. The machine looked too big for its rider but the Sheep had no problem kicking it over.

He goosed the engine and motioned for Sweeney to climb on.

Sweeney hugged the lantern to his side and held onto the Sheep with his free arm as the Abomination opened up the hog. The speed might have alarmed Sweeney if the rush of cold air hadn’t felt so good. As if it were washing away all the grit from the cave.

They came upon the Harmony from the rear, pulling into the ruins of the old crematorium where the Abominations had played King of the Hill atop the dilapidated hearse. The Sheep killed the engine and climbed off the bike. Sweeney followed him to the antique funeral car where the Sheep reached through the passenger window, popped the glove box open, and extracted a pack of cigarettes.

The Sheep moved back around to the front of the hearse, eased himself onto its hood, and lit up a smoke. Sweeney joined him and they sat silently and rested for a few minutes, staring out at the prosthetics mill as if mulling a night on the late shift.

After a few minutes of this, Sweeney said, “Why are we stopping? You’re almost home.”

“I got to prepare myself,” the Sheep said, “before I can jump back into the crowd. It’s not that easy a transition for me. To go from the solitude back to the noise of the tribe. I can’t rush right back in.”

Sweeney looked out at the monstrosity they called Gehenna. In the distance, he could see a couple of Abominations sitting on the loading dock and someone was working on his bike down in the gravel lot.

“We had some good times in this city,” the Sheep said. “Personally, I’m gonna hate leavin’ here.”

Sweeney turned toward him.

“You’re leaving?”

The Sheep nodded.

“If things work out,” he said. “We’ll be movin’ on next week.”

“Where to?” Sweeney asked.

The Sheep grimaced as if this were a painful subject.

“Not sure yet,” he said. “Buzz has one idea. Nadia has another. But it’ll get worked out. We’ll know when we need to know. Buzz says we shouldn’t try to think ahead so much. You kill all the spontaneity in life.”

“Can I ask,” Sweeney said, “how you met Buzz?”

“Sure you can ask,” the Sheep said and then threw an elbow to show he was just kidding. “No, it’s all right. It’s a good story. They found me in Phoenix. And let me tell you, I was not in the best of shape, okay? I was not doing very well. I’d burned through all my money and I’d fallen in with some bad people. These were not good people. But, you know, it’s just like that song— When the sinner is ready, the savior comes along.”