The Raven Read online

  To Badler’s back, Hernandez said, “We do the Hound first. Then you can be as rough with the other as you want.”

  Badler continued to appraise Dez. Something calculating permeated his face. “You won’t tell Keaton?”

  “Long as you cooperate with this one,” was Hernandez’s answer.

  At once Badler joined Hernandez, who began to unlock Chaney’s shackles.

  Though barred from Chaney’s face by the goons’ broad backs, Dez heard real trepidation in the hairy man’s voice. “What are you two doin’?”

  “Now come on, Hound,” Badler said, working open one of the leg cuffs. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on. You’re dumb, but you’re not that dumb.”

  “Don’t rile him up,” Hernandez muttered.

  Badler chuckled. “Sometimes I wish the boss would find me a tougher partner, you know that, Hernandez? You look the part, and you can lift a goddamned car, but under all that muscle you’re a bowl of Jell-O.”

  “Hey,” Hernandez growled, his hand squeezing the back of Badler’s neck. “Watch your mouth.”

  Badler winced but returned Hernandez’s stare with equal animosity. “You better think about touching me. We start something, we’re sure as hell gonna finish it.”

  Hernandez didn’t let go. “You better learn when to shut up.”

  They’d shifted enough that Dez could see Chaney’s face. The hairy man glanced from one goon to the other, then finally said, “You guys wanna solve this, you should go outside.”

  Badler shot him a look. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Hound? Spare your smelly ass, and have us killed by the goddamned vampires?”

  Chaney’s eyes went wide. “They’re not out there, are they?”

  “Maybe they are,” Badler said, grinning. “Maybe they’re sniffing around for wolf meat. We should string you up out there, let them follow the stench.”

  “You done with that cuff yet?” Hernandez asked.

  “Keep your panties on,” Badler answered. He unlocked the leg cuff, moved the key toward the cuff on Chaney’s right wrist.

  “I don’t wanna go outside,” Chaney whined.

  Hernandez tapped his fingers impatiently. “You’re not goin’ outside.”

  “What Hernandez says is too true,” Badler said as he unlocked the handcuff. He seized Chaney under the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Though outside would be a hell of a lot better. Least out there you’d have a chance.”

  Hernandez gripped Chaney’s other arm, and though Chaney’s muscles were well-defined, his nakedness and weakened state rendered him a pitiful sight. The hairy man swayed on his feet, causing Dez to wonder how long it had been since Chaney had been permitted to stand.

  “We ain’t goin’ outside?” Chaney asked.

  Hernandez shepherded him toward the stairs. “Uh-uh.”

  “Where then?”

  “Why, the service,” Badler said brightly. “You’re a guest of honor.”

  “Upstairs?” Chaney asked. Dez noted the dried nuggets of shit caught in Chaney’s furry butt crack. How long since the man had been bathed?

  “Come on,” Hernandez said, towing Chaney with a bit more force.

  “But….” Chaney stumbled, almost went down. “Can’t I…can you give me underpants? If Iris is up there—”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Hound!” Badler shouted. “Everything’s coming to an end, and all you can worry about is some barmaid seeing your winky?”

  “Up,” Hernandez instructed. Chaney began the long climb up the staircase.

  “A pair of drawers?” Chaney asked. “Please, Hernandez?”

  “We’ll see,” Hernandez said.

  “Motherfucker, this bastard stinks,” Badler said.

  “Please gimme some drawers,” Chaney pleaded, this time stopping halfway up the stairs.

  Badler spun Chaney around and slammed him against the cinder block wall. “You get what we goddamned give you, you hear that, Hound?”

  When Chaney continued to beg, Badler seized him by the shoulders, smashed him against the wall so hard that Chaney’s head bounced. “Never met someone so feebleminded,” Badler said. “I explain it clearly, and you still don’t have a clue.” He rammed Chaney against the wall again to accentuate his point.

  “Let’s move,” Hernandez said, taking hold of Chaney’s arm and dragging him up the steps.

  Badler cuffed Chaney on the back of the head. “Dumb mutt. Never smelled anything so godawful in my life.”

  Hernandez sounded bored. “You wanna bathe him before the service?”

  “Rip his head off is what I’ll do,” Badler answered. “Can’t believe all the fuss we’ve made over this bastard. He’s done nothing but blubber and shit all over the floors since we brought him here.”

  Chaney moaned, “I don’t want Iris to see—”

  “She’s gonna see your little pecker,” Badler teased, “and she’s gonna laugh like hell.”

  As they passed out of sight and the lights were extinguished, Chaney began to sob.

  In the ensuing silence, Dez strained to listen for a commotion upstairs. He wondered what Chaney’s trigger was. Clearly it wasn’t rage or sorrow. He might never again transform, at least if tonight were to be his execution, as Dez assumed it would be.

  And reclining in the dark, Dez wondered what it would be like to die. True, he’d pondered the question hundreds of times since the world changed – he assumed all survivors had pondered that question – but now he was facing execution.

  He’d witnessed a couple of them. The most recent, he supposed, had been the reason why he’d ended up with Susan, although it wasn’t until a few weeks after the execution that they’d even kissed.

  The man who’d been killed had been caught stealing food.

  It was near the end of the colony – looking back, it might have been the reason the colony disbanded – and it had been Jason Oates who’d decided on the death sentence for the condemned. Whenever there was violence, Jason Oates was invariably behind it.

  Jason had caught a colonist – a middle-aged man named Suresh Sharma – stealing beef jerky from the storage area. What complicated matters was the fact that Sharma had supplied most of the food they still had from the grocery store he’d run in the pre-bomb world. Sharma had only joined their group a few months prior and had been enthusiastically received due to the supplies he’d ferreted away under his store.

  When Sharma’s thieving was discovered – and there was no doubt he’d been taking food on the sly – many colonists had pointed out that it wasn’t really stealing since Sharma had brought the food in the first place. But Jason claimed it was a matter of principle and if they ignored this transgression, it would embolden others.

  Jason and those who supported his draconian methods had dragged Sharma to the mouth of the cave, and Jason had drawn the Smith & Wesson with which he claimed to keep peace.

  It was Susan who’d nearly saved Sharma’s life.

  “You’re turning us into a police state, Jason,” she’d said.

  “It needs policing,” had been his answer.

  Dez and several others had joined Susan in a semicircle at the mouth of the cave, where Jason and a trio of his followers held Sharma captive. The grocery store owner had looked pathetic standing there by the younger, stouter men. Sharma’s bronze head was nearly bald on top, with a disheveled thatch of black strands hanging loose off to one side, like a graduation tassel. Sharma’s belly was round beneath his faded maroon shirt. On his face were several welts and contusions, a cut lip where Jason had struck him. To Dez, Sharma looked like he wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

  “You’ve made your point, Jason,” one of the colonists said.

  “You’re missing the point,” one of Jason’s loyalists shot back. “If Suresh isn’t punished, this will happen again.” />
  “Let him go,” Dez said.

  Something new permeated Jason’s face, like he’d been yearning for Dez’s protest. Later, Dez realized this was the case. The tension between the two had been growing over many months, and at the center of it was Susan. Not only was she the prettiest woman in the colony, she was likely the smartest. When he’d shown up at the colony, Susan had already been with Jason, but increasingly, Dez had come to believe her decision to take up with their leader had as much to do with lack of options as it did any genuine emotion.

  Later, after the colony had come to its brutal end, Susan had confirmed this. Though she hated to admit it, she’d chosen Jason by default.

  But that chilly October afternoon, just about a year ago, Dez realized, she’d still been with the sadistic son of a bitch.

  “Punishing him is one thing,” Susan said. “Killing him would be shameful.”

  Jason’s eyebrows had risen at this, giving him a slightly mad look. The expression had surfaced with greater frequency lately and had grown at a rate equal to Susan’s interest in Dez. Somehow, Dez realized as he gazed at Sharma, this had become about Dez and Susan and Jason, and that chilled him to the bone. Because if punishing Sharma became a matter of besting Dez….

  “Send him away,” Dez said.

  Susan had turned to stare at him in amazement. “That’s a death sentence too.”

  Jason spoke with finality, gesticulating with the .38 in a way that made Dez’s guts clench. “We’ve survived this long because we have order. This…” He nodded at Sharma. “…this shit has threatened the order by putting himself ahead of the group.”

  “I’m sure he won’t do it again,” Susan said. “Will you, Suresh?”

  “I’m very sorry,” the man said quietly.

  Dez admired the man’s dignity, but he’d hoped Sharma might utter something a hell of a lot more eloquent. Jason’s loyalists looked like they wanted blood.

  “Words,” Jason said. “They’re just words. Don’t you know they don’t mean anything? He gets away with this, he’ll do it again, only worse next time.”

  “What about the kids?” one of the loyalists asked. It was a common rallying cry used to justify Jason’s decisions. The truth was that there were only three children left, and one was twelve years old. The other two were infants and only drank breast milk. Neither infant had exhibited signs of changing into a monster.

  “Suresh brought the food,” Susan said.

  “Not all of it,” one of Jason’s men answered.

  “And we gave him protection,” another loyalist said. “He wouldn’t be alive without us.”

  “He survived on his own for a year,” Dez pointed out.

  “Because he had a fucking treasure trove of food under his store!” a loyalist exclaimed.

  “Which he shared with us,” Susan said, stepping forward.

  The sight of Susan approaching Jason and his men made Dez’s heart hammer. “Let him go,” Dez heard himself say, and as soon as he’d said it, he knew he’d doomed Sharma.

  Jason’s eyes flitted from Susan to Dez and back to Susan.

  “Ah, well fuck it,” Jason said, placing the muzzle against Sharma’s temple and squeezing the trigger.

  The side of Sharma’s face sprayed in soupy rills; the man teetered away from Jason and slumped on the ground at a loyalist’s feet. Susan screamed, not in fear or sorrow, but in rage. Dez identified with that scream. Jason had killed Sharma because he’d wanted to, not because he was maintaining order. Worse, he’d done it because Dez and Susan had sided against Jason, and this was his method of retaliating.

  Susan had turned away from Sharma’s twitching body, and when her eyes had fastened on Dez’s, he’d known she’d made her decision. She was done with Jason. All that was left was for Susan and Dez to figure out how to overthrow Jason and his men.

  But Dez’s memories stopped then.

  Because Badler and Hernandez were coming down the steps for him.

  It was time for his execution.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Sermon

  “Where’s Iris?” Tom Chaney was shouting. “Where’d you put her?”

  Badler and Hernandez escorted Dez toward the front of the seating area, where the tables had been cleared; in the center of the clearing dangled two sets of chains, which had been threaded through eyehooks hanging from the ceiling and threaded through pulleys, after which the chains had been tethered to the thick wooden balcony supports. One set of chains was obviously meant for Dez.

  Tom Chaney was already shackled in the other set. His feet had been imprisoned in leg cuffs and chains that arose from eyehooks bolted to the floor. Dez hadn’t noticed any of the eyehooks earlier, but he supposed that’s because there hadn’t been chains attached to them. Nor a hairy, whimpering man.

  “Where is she?” Chaney asked.

  “She’s being guarded, you ignoramus,” Badler answered.

  “Don’t hurt Iris,” Chaney was pleading. “You gotta tell me what you did with her.”

  “Why the hell do you care?” demanded Bernadette.

  “No kidding, Chaney,” Badler agreed as he muscled Dez closer to the chains. “I thought you were afraid of her seeing you bare-assed naked.”

  Several patrons guffawed. The tables had been arranged in concentric semicircles that emanated outward all the way to the walls beneath the balconies. Like the main level, the balconies were crammed with faces, their expressions ranging from avid interest to blank, incurious stares. Only on a handful of faces did Dez read any semblance of sympathy, but even if there were denizens of the Four Winds who disagreed with Keaton’s macabre ceremony, they were a scant minority, and would no doubt keep silent while Dez and Tom Chaney were slaughtered. His scan of the balcony paused on Michael Summers and Joe Kidd. The pair looked neither pleased nor disturbed by the ceremony, merely inured to it. No help there, Dez decided.

  No help from anywhere.

  When Badler took hold of a chain dangling from the ceiling, Dez began to struggle. Only when Hernandez and Badler had wrestled Dez to the ground and gotten one handcuff around his wrist did he understand how hideous this would be. He glanced at Chaney, who’d been strung up until the chains snubbed taut, the tips of his toes ten feet off the ground. Chaney scarcely had room to squirm, much less kick or struggle. He was pleading to know where Iris was, and though Dez wondered the same thing himself, he was too overcome with fright to ask. The Four Winds was a kaleidoscope of taunts, blurred scowls, and gesticulating arms.

  The other handcuff was cinched around Dez’s wrist, and though he fought it, his ankles were imprisoned in the leg cuffs with the assistance of Crosby and Gattis, who were all too eager to join in the festivities.

  Without pause, Dez heard a metallic cranking from his right and discovered a pair of patrons feeding the chains through the pulleys. The slack in the chains began to diminish. Dez shot a wild glance behind him at the bar.

  No sign of Keaton.

  Or Iris, for that matter. The people present – there were women, Dez realized, though only a smattering here and there – continued to jeer. Dez felt the tug of the chains on his wrists. His throat tightened. Someone whacked him on the back of the head, but he scarcely felt it. Liquid spattered his side, someone having thrown a drink in his direction.

  “Cut off their peckers!” a gleeful voice called, and when Dez turned, he saw it was the man with all the piercings. What had been the man’s name?

  Wyzinski, Dez remembered. Beyond Wyzinski, Crosby, and Gattis, Dez caught a glimpse of a woman of perhaps forty with a hardened, wind-burnt face and remorseless ebony marbles for eyes. Absurdly, the sight of the woman reminded Dez he wore only boxer briefs, and he made to cover himself before remembering he was in the process of being strung up.

  The chains lifted him.

  “Shouldn’t’ve come back,” a
rough voice said.

  Dez shot a look at the speaker, discovered the giant in the black jacket, the one who’d nearly come to blows with Hernandez and Badler earlier in the evening.

  “He’s too stupid to stay away,” an answering voice said.

  “I ain’t complaining,” Black Jacket said. “It’ll liven things up watchin’ him die.”

  Dez’s toes broke contact with the floor. The pain in his wrists was severe, the steel cuffs already biting into his skin. He rose higher, the cranking noise a funeral dirge. A new pain assailed him, this time in his armpits and his shoulders. He’d read about the crucifixion of Christ, knew that although this wasn’t the same thing as being crucified, there were a couple parallels. For one, victims of crucifixion often expired from suffocation rather than blood loss. They were left to hang on crosses, unable to support their own weight, until their lungs were, in essence, crushed. As his body rose higher, higher, he already felt his lungs squeezing in his chest, and noted with alarm how difficult it was to draw a satisfying breath.

  Asphyxiation. My God, what a ghastly word.

  Also like a crucifixion, this was public. He looked out on the faces, judged there to be three hundred or more. He’d not have believed this many people

  (beasts)

  could congregate in the new world, but here they all were, eyes glittering with anticipation, voices raised in mob justice. Were any of them Latents? Or was he the only one without powers? He recalled the ending of one of his favorite novels, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, how the tables turned on humankind, how the perception of villainy changed. At least in that story, the protagonist, Robert Neville, had spent his time striving for a cure for the vampirism that had ravaged Earth. What had Dez done? Pursued the woman he loved, forsaking the rest of mankind. Well, he thought stubbornly, was there shame in that?