Moments later the door unlocked and a smiling monk with hair the color and texture of mold fuzz came in with Brother Fred, who still had his pump shotgun. There were two dead folks with them. A man and a woman. They wore torn clothes and the mouse-ear hats. Neither looked long dead or smelled particularly bad. Actually, the monks smelled worse.
Using the barrel of the shotgun, Brother Fred poked them down the hall to a room with metal tables and medical instruments.
Brother Lazarus was on the far side of one of the tables. He was smiling. His nose looked especially cancerous this morning. A white pustule the size of a thumb tip had taken up residence on the left side of his snout, and it looked like a pearl onion in a turd.
Nearby stood a nun. She was short with good, if skinny, legs, and she wore the same outfit as the nun on the bus. It looked more girlish on her, perhaps because she was thin and small-breasted. She had a nice face, and eyes that were all pupil. Wisps of blond hair crawled out around the edges of her headgear.
She looked pale and weak, as if wearied to the bone. There was a birthmark on her right cheek that looked like a distant view of a small bird in flight.
“Good morning,” Brother Lazarus said. “I hope you gentlemen slept well.”
“What’s this about work?” Wayne said.
“Work?” Brother Lazarus said.
“I described it to them that way,” Brother Fred said. “Perhaps an impulsive description.”
“I’ll say,” Brother Lazarus said. “No work here, gentlemen. You have my word on that. We do all the work. Lie on these tables and we’ll take a sampling of your blood.”
“Why?” Wayne said.
“Science,” Brother Lazarus said. “I intend to find a cure for this germ that makes the dead come back to life, and to do that, I need living human beings to study. Sounds kind of mad scientist, doesn’t it? But I assure you, you’ve nothing to lose but a few drops of blood. Well, maybe more than a few drops, but nothing serious.”
“Use your own goddamn blood,” Calhoun said.
“We do. But we’re always looking for fresh specimens. Little here, little there. And if you don’t do it, we’ll kill you.”
Calhoun spun and hit Brother Fred on the nose. It was a solid punch and Brother Fred hit the floor on his butt, but he hung onto the shotgun and pointed it up at Calhoun. “Go on,” he said, his nose streaming blood. “Try that again.”
Wayne flexed to help, but hesitated. He could kick Brother Fred in the head from where he was, but that might not keep him from shooting Calhoun, and there would go the extra reward money. And besides, he’d given his word to the bastard that they’d try to help each other survive until they got out of this.
The other monk clasped his hands and swung them into the side of Calhoun’s head, knocking him down. Brother Fred got up, and while Calhoun was trying to rise, he hit him with the stock of the shotgun in the back of the head, hit him so hard it drove Calhoun’s forehead into the floor. Calhoun rolled over on his side and lay there, his eyes fluttering like moth wings.
“Brother Fred, you must learn to turn the other cheek,” Brother Lazarus said. “Now put this sack of shit on the table.”
Brother Fred checked Wayne to see if he looked like trouble. Wayne put his hands in his pockets and smiled.
Brother Fred called the two dead folks over and had them put Calhoun on the table. Brother Lazarus strapped him down.
The nun brought a tray of needles, syringes, cotton and bottles over, put it down on the table next to Calhoun’s head. Brother Lazarus rolled up Calhoun’s sleeve and fixed up a needle and stuck it in Calhoun’s arm, drew it full of blood. He stuck the needle through the rubber top of one of the bottles and shot the blood into that.
He looked at Wayne and said, “I hope you’ll be less trouble.”
“Do I get some orange juice and a little cracker afterwards?” Wayne said.
“You get to walk out without a knot on your head,” Brother Lazarus said.
“Guess that’ll have to do.”
Wayne got on the table next to Calhoun and Brother Lazarus strapped him down. The nun brought the tray over and Brother Lazarus did to him what he had done to Calhoun. The nun stood over Wayne and looked down at his face. Wayne tried to read something in her features but couldn’t find a clue.
When Brother Lazarus was finished he took hold of Wayne’s chin and shook it. “My, but you two boys look healthy. But you can never be sure. We’ll have to run the blood through some tests. Meantime, Sister Worth will run a few additional tests on you, and,” he nodded at the unconscious Calhoun, “I’ll see to your friend here.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” Wayne said.
They took Wayne off the table, and Sister Worth and Brother Fred, and his shotgun, directed him down the hall into another room.
The room was lined with shelves that were lined with instruments and bottles. The lighting was poor, most of it coming through a slatted window, though there was an anemic yellow bulb overhead. Dust motes swam in the air.
In the center of the room on its rim was a great, spoked wheel. It had two straps well spaced at the top, and two more at the bottom. Beneath the bottom straps were blocks of wood. The wheel was attached in back to an upright metal bar that had switches and buttons all over it.
Brother Fred made Wayne strip and get on the wheel with his back to the hub and his feet on the blocks. Sister Worth strapped his ankles down tight, then he was made to put his hands up, and she strapped his wrists to the upper part of the wheel.
“I hope this hurts a lot,” Brother Fred said.
“Wipe the blood off your face,” Wayne said. “It makes you look silly.”
Brother Fred made a gesture with his middle finger that wasn’t religious and left the room.
Sister Worth touched a switch and the wheel began to spin, slowly at first, and the bad light came through the windows and poked through the rungs and the dust swam before his eyes and the wheel and its spokes threw twisting shadows on the wall.
As he went around, Wayne closed his eyes. It kept him from feeling so dizzy, especially on the down swings.
On a turn up, he opened his eyes and caught sight of Sister Worth standing in front of the wheel staring at him. He said, “Why?” and closed his eyes as the wheel dipped.
“Because Brother Lazarus says so,” came the answer after such a long time Wayne had almost forgotten the question. Actually, he hadn’t expected a response. He was surprised that such a thing had come out of his mouth, and he felt a little diminished for having asked.
He opened his eyes on another swing up, and she was moving behind the wheel, out of his line of vision. He heard a snick like a switch being flipped and lightning jumped through him and he screamed in spite of himself. A little fork of electricity licked out of his mouth like a reptile tongue tasting air.
Faster spun the wheel and the jolts came more often and he screamed less loud, and finally not at all. He was too numb. He was adrift in space wearing only his cowboy hat and boots, moving away from earth very fast. Floating all around him were wrecked cars. He looked and saw that one of them was his ‘57, and behind the steering wheel was Pop. Sitting beside the old man was a Mexican. Two more were in the back seat. They looked a little drunk.
One of the whores in back pulled up her dress and cocked it high up so he could see her pussy. It looked like that needed a shave.
He smiled and tried to go for it, but the ‘57 was moving away, swinging wide and turning its tail to him. He could see a face at the back window. Pop’s face. He had crawled back there and was waving slowly and sadly. A whore pulled Pop from view.
The wrecked cars moved away too, as if caught in the vacuum of the ‘57’s retreat. Wayne swam with his arms, kicked with his legs, trying to pursue the ‘57 and the wrecks. But he dangled where he was, like a moth pinned to a board. The cars moved out of sight and left him there with his arms and legs stretched out, spinning
