The Getaway God. Richard Kadrey

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СКАЧАТЬ seen some cold moves in my time, I’ve fought and killed in Hell and on earth, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

      Over the sound of the saws I hear voices. All the screaming got someone’s attention. That’s all I need. A warehouse of hysterical meat packers with big knives and cell phones. Imagine explaining this to a 911 operator. It might take awhile to get a patrol car. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. I’m not in the mood to deal with another crazed mob right now.

      They’re getting near me now and I let them. When the first few tough guys emerge from the rows of beef and see me in the meat cathedral surrounded by freezing corpses, they stop. Good. They’re not going to rush me but they’re still between me and the door. I pull the Colt and shoot three rounds into the floor by their feet. That alters their mood and sends them scurrying like sensible rats out of there.

      Only one person is still coming in my direction. Candy shoulders her way between the beef rows, her gun up, sweeping the room. But when she sees me, even she stops. For a second I can see it in her eyes. She wonders if I did this. Then she sees the meat saws and relaxes. She lowers her gun and comes over to me.

      “Oh man,” she says. “I mean. Oh man.”

      I go from saw to saw and turn them off. The sound is giving me a headache.

      “Yeah.”

      “What were they …?”

      “It was a sacrifice to one of their idiot Angra gods.”

      “Couldn’t they have just had a bake sale?”

      I walk over and put my hand on her gun, lowering it to her side. I put my arm around her. I haven’t seen her this freaked out before. She presses against me.

      I say, “Wells is going to be pissed.”

      She nods.

      “He can’t blame you for this insanity.”

      “Wells blames me for tooth decay. He can sure blame me for this. But maybe there’s something I can do. Help me find a cooler and some dry ice.”

      There’s a stack of Styrofoam coolers just outside the freezer. I grab one and Candy gets plastic packets of dry ice. We go back into the cooler. I have to work fast. Someone’s called the cops by now. For all I know, one of the workers has a pistol in the back of their truck. There’s a lot of that going around these days. When we get back to the suicide circle, I tell Candy to go back and guard the door.

      “You just don’t want me to see you do it,” she says.

      “You’re right. But I also want you to guard the door.”

      “Okay.”

      She runs back to the freezer entrance. I turn on one of the meat saws and get to work. It doesn’t take long. Mr. Charger did the hard part himself. All I have to do is get through some gristle and the spinal cord so I can twist his head all the way off.

      When I do, I put it in the cooler and pack ice around it.

      Candy shakes her head when she sees me with the container.

      “I’ve dated some messed-up people in my time.”

      “Write ‘Dear Abby.’ Let’s get out of here.”

      “Let’s.”

      There’s a nice dark shadow by a stack of boxes on the loading dock. I start to pull Candy through and stop.

      “What you said before. Eight maids and you. That’s a nine-way. Where am I in all this?”

      “That’s your present. You get to watch.”

      “I can see it for free on the Web.”

      “I’m better than the Web.”

      “I’ll give you that. But you’re still coming out ahead on this deal. Better get me that pointy hat so I won’t feel cheated.”

      She takes my hand.

      “You got it, Jingles.”

      We step into a shadow and come out in the Golden Vigil’s new L.A. headquarters, right off the eight hole of the Wilshire Golf Club. They eminent-domained the place right out from under the blue bloods, paying ten cents on the dollar, for what it’s worth. It’s the first time I ever really respected the Vigil. Marshals and Vigil witch doctors still dress up in pricy sports clothes and play round after round of existential golf on the grounds. No one keeps score, but someone has to be out on the greens keeping up the appearance that the club is still just a place for rich morons to blow an afternoon. Like maybe none of the locals noticed the surplus Iraq War ASVs, enough lab gear to restart the Manhattan Project, and about a hundred blacked-out bulletproof vans sneaking into the club.

      A man is waiting for me inside the clubhouse. He’s wearing a black suit and skinny tie, with a flag pin on the lapel. He looks like a mortician’s idea of a high school principal.

      U.S. Marshal Larson Wells is God’s own Pinkerton on Earth. The Golden Vigil is Homeland Security’s dirty little secret—an investigation and law enforcement operation for supernatural activity. Which is a nice way of saying they’re dedicated to harassing people like me and pretty much everyone I know. They’re thorough and obsessive. From what I’ve heard, they still have Lucifer on a terrorist watch list with a price on his head.

      Wells is a charming piece of work. A Nevada Holy Roller marshal who hates working with me as much as I hate working for him. But we both have a vested interest in stopping the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, from returning and eating the world. Wells has a habit of calling all Sub Rosa and Lurkers “pixies,” which isn’t so bad on its own. It’s just that he says it the way a backwoods redneck says “faggot.” He used to run the Vigil with an angel named Aelita. She’s dead. I didn’t do it, but I would have been happy to.

      I’ve been back on the Vigil payroll for a couple of weeks and things are going swell.

      “Where is he?” says Wells when he sees me and Candy.

      “There was a problem,” I say.

      “What kind of problem?”

      I hold out the ice chest. Wells’s eyes narrow and he opens the lid an inch before dropping it down again.

      “What in all of God’s creation is wrong with you? I sent you on a simple snatch-and-grab. I wanted to question this man. Where’s the rest of him?”

      “In a meat locker near Sunset and Echo Park, along with a dozen other dead Angra fans. They built a Sistine Chapel out of body parts in one of the freezers. You might want to send a team over before the cops haul away all the evidence. You can get the GPS off my phone.”

      “Don’t move,” says Wells. He pulls out his BlackBerry and thumbs in a text like he wants to punch the keys in the face. When he’s done he sighs and peeks in the cooler again.

      “Why did you even bring that thing here? I’m not paying you by the scalp.”

      “He didn’t do it,” says Candy. “Well, not all of it. Just СКАЧАТЬ