Calhoun jerked it in gear, backed it out and around in front of Wayne and Sister Worth. The monks and nuns had started firing and their rounds bounced off the side of the armored bus.
From inside Calhoun yelled, “Get the hell on.”
Wayne stuck the guns in his belt, grabbed up Sister Worth and leapt inside. Calhoun jerked the bus forward and Wayne and Sister Worth went flying over a seat and into another.
“I thought you were leaving,” Wayne said.
“I wanted to. But I gave my word.”
Wayne stretched Sister Worth out on the seat and looked at her leg. After that tossing Calhoun had given them, the break was sticking out even more.
Calhoun closed the bus door and checked his wing-mirror. Nuns and monks and dead folks had piled into a couple of buses, and now the buses were pursuing them. One of them moved very fast, as if souped up.
“I probably got the granny of the bunch,” Calhoun said. They climbed over a ridge of sand, then they were on the narrow road that wound itself upwards. Behind them, one of the buses had fallen back, maybe some kind of mechanical trouble. The other was gaining.
The road widened and Calhoun yelled, “I think this is what the fucker’s been waiting for.”
Even as Calhoun spoke, their pursuer put on a burst of speed and swung left and came up beside them, tried to swerve over and push them off the road, down into the deepening valley. But Calhoun fought the curves and didn’t budge.
The other bus swung its door open and a nun, the very one who had been on the bus that brought them to Jesus Land, stood there with her legs spread wide, showing the black-pantied mound of her crotch. She had one arm bent around a seat post and was holding in both hands the ever-popular clergy tool, the twelve-gauge pump.
As they made a curve, the nun fired a round into the window next to Calhoun. The window made a cracking noise and thin, crooked lines spread in all directions, but the glass held.
She pumped a round into the chamber and fired again. Bullet proof or not, this time the front sheet of glass fell away. Another well-placed round and the rest of the glass would go and Calhoun could wave his head goodbye.
Wayne put his knees in a seat and got the window down. The nun saw him, whirled and fired. The shot was low and hit the bottom part of the window and starred it and pelleted the chassis.
Wayne stuck a.38 out of the window and fired as the nun was jacking another load into position. His shot hit her in the head and her right eye went big and wet, and she swung around on the pole and lost the shotgun. It went out the door. She clung there by the bend of her elbow for a moment, then her arm straightened and she fell outside. The bus ran over her and she popped red and juicy at both ends like a stomped jelly roll.
“Waste of good pussy,” Calhoun said. He edged into the other bus, and it pushed back. But Calhoun pushed harder and made it hit the wall with a screech like a panther.
The bus came back and shoved Calhoun to the side of the cliff and honked twice for Jesus.
Calhoun down-shifted, let off the gas, allowed the other bus to soar past by half a length. Then he jerked the wheel so that he caught the rear of it and knocked it across the road. He speared it in the side with the nose of his bus and the other started to spin. It clipped the front of Calhoun’s bus and peeled the bumper back. Calhoun braked and the other bus kept spinning. It spun off the road and down into the valley amidst a chorus of cries.
Thirty minutes later they reached the top of the canyon and were in the desert. The bus began to throw up smoke from the front and make a noise like a dog strangling on a chicken bone. Calhoun pulled over.
“Goddamn bumper got twisted under there and it’s shredded the tire some,” Calhoun said. “I think if we can peel the bumper off, there’s enough of that tire to run on.”
Wayne and Calhoun got hold of the bumper and pulled but it wouldn’t come off. Not completely. Part of it had been creased, and that part finally gave way and broke off from the rest of it.
“That ought to be enough to keep from rubbing the tire,” Calhoun said.
Sister Worth called from inside the bus. Wayne went to check on her. “Take me off the bus,” she said. “…I want to feel free air and sun.”
“There doesn’t feel like there’s any air out there,” Wayne said. “And the sun feels just like it always does. Hot.”
“Please.”
He picked her up and carried her outside and found a ridge of sand and laid her down so her head was propped against it.
“I…I need batteries,” she said.
“Say what?” Wayne said.
She lay looking straight into the sun. “Brother Lazarus’s greatest work…a dead folk that can think…has memory of the past…Was a scientist too…” Her hand came up in stages, finally got hold of her head gear and pushed it off.
Gleaming from the center of her tangled blond hair was a silver knob.
“He…was not a good man… I am a good woman. I want to feel alive…like before…batteries going…brought others.”
Her hand fumbled at a snap pocket on her habit. Wayne opened it for her and got out what was inside. Four batteries.
“Uses two…simple.”
Calhoun was standing over them now. “That explains some things,” he said.
“Don’t look at me like that…” Sister Worth said, and Wayne realized he had never told her his name and she had never asked. “Unscrew…put the batteries in… Without them I’ll be an eater… Can’t wait too long.”
“All right,” Wayne said. He went behind her and propped her up on the sand drift and unscrewed the metal shaft from her skull. He thought about when she had fucked him on the wheel and how desperate she had been to feel something, and how she had been cold as flint and lustless. He remembered how she had looked in the mirror hoping to see something that wasn’t there.
He dropped the batteries in the sand and took out one of the revolvers and put it close to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. Her body jerked slightly and fell over, her face turning toward him.
The bullet had come out where the bird had been on her cheek and had taken it completely away, leaving a bloodless hole.
“Best thing,” Calhoun said. “There’s enough live pussy in the world without you pulling this broken-legged dead thing around after you on a board.”
“Shut up,” Wayne said.
“When a man gets sentimental over women and kids, he can count himself out.”
Wayne stood up.
“Well boy,” Calhoun said. “I reckon it’s time.”
“Reckon so,” Wayne said.
“How about we do this with some class? Give me one of your pistols and we’ll get back-to-back and I’ll count to ten, and when I get there, we’ll turn and shoot.”
Wayne gave Calhoun one of the pistols. Calhoun checked the chambers, said, “I’ve got four loads.”
Wayne took two out of his pistol and tossed them on the ground. “Even Steven,” he said.
They got back-to-back and held the guns by their legs.
“Guess if you kill me you’ll take me in,” Calhoun said. “So that means you’ll put a bullet through my head if I need it. I don’t want to come back as one of the dead folks. Got your word on that?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll do the same for you. Give my word. You know that’s worth something.”
“We gonna shoot or talk?”
“You know, boy, under different circumstances, I could have liked you. We might have been friends.”
“Not likely.”
Calhoun started counting, and they started stepping. When he got to ten, they turned.
Calhoun’s pistol barked first, and Wayne felt the bullet punch him low in the right side of his chest, spinning him slightly. He lifted his revolver and took his time and shot just as Calhoun fired again.
