Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [113]
A tiny light glowed above the bus stop just down the street. Hudson looked at his watch, then chuckled and shook his head when he saw that the bus would be coming by six minutes from now.
“Yo!” shot the subtle voice. Dollar-store sandals slapped the cement. Then another darker voice—a man’s.
“Shee-it . . .”
Bags in hand, Hudson turned to face them, unworried.
“This the fuck askin’ ’bout the Larken House,” said the prostitute whom Hudson recognized at once: the woman who’d shown him where the house was, in the zebra-striped tube top. Her white teeth gleamed when she smiled.
Two more figures stood on either side, a slouchy black male with his hair stuffed in a stocking that looked like Jiffy Pop, and a chubby, high-chinned white guy in jeans cut off at midcalf, a ten-sizes-too-large T-shirt, and a whitewall. He had snakes tattooed on the sides of his neck.
The black guy took one step. “What’s in the suitcases, my man?”
Hudson stalled, then laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The white guy bulled forward: “What’s in the suitcases, white boy!” his voice boomed, and from nowhere he’d produced a very large Buck knife.
“Six million dollars. If you want it, you’ll have to take it.”
The black guy nodded to the white one. “Just another poo-putt white muv-fuck.”
“Shee-it,” chuckled the white guy, and then he lunged with the knife.
“Cut dat boy!” the girl cheered on. “Cut him!” But it was only a second later when she shrieked. Plumes of blood launched from the attacker’s eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. His crotch, too, expelled a copious volume, which saturated the ludicrous pants. Then the knife clattered to the sidewalk and he collapsed.
“Ambrose!” shrieked the girl, fingertips to face. “What he do?”
“Don’t know,” crackled the voice of the black guy. There was a click! when he cocked a small pistol. “But he got somethin’ in them cases, so’s I’ll just bust a cap in his face.”
Here was the proof of Hudson’s newfound faith. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bust all the ’caps’ you want.”
The tiny pistol’s report sounded more like a loud handclap. A muzzle flash bloomed in a way that Hudson found spectacular. More spectacular, though, was the way the bullet was instantly repelled by the otherworldly ward surrounding him, and bounced immediately back into the black man’s Adam’s apple.
The man gargled, pop-eyed, and actually hopped about in the nearest weedy yard, hand clamped to his throat. He thrashed into some bushes and collapsed.
Hudson looked at the girl. “I’m protected by Lucifer, the Morning Star. That’s what I did in the Larken House tonight. I sold my soul . . . to Lucifer.”
The girl ran away.
“Hmm.”
Hudson moved on. The ruckus of helicopters snapped his gaze up to the twilit sky. His ears thumped; several large helicopters—clearly military—roared overhead. They were flying strangely low. Then:
Wow!
Several jet fighters screamed past in the same direction: north.
I wonder what that’s all about, Hudson thought. Maneuvers, probably; there were several big air bases nearby. He wheeled the suitcases down the sidewalk and across the street. Exactly sixty-six steps later, he arrived at the glass-shattered bus shelter where he detected the ember of a cigarette brighten, then lessen.
“Oh, you,” a ragged voice greeted. “How’s it goin’?”
It was the homeless guy from the deaconess’s church. “Hi, Forbes. I’m fine.”
The bum sucked the cigarette down to the filter, then flicked it away with begrimed fingers. His body odor seemed thick as heavy fog. “You goin’ on a trip?” he asked, noticing the suitcases. “Shit, man, the Greyhound station’s the other way.”
Am I . . . going on a trip? Hudson could’ve laughed. “No, I’m just going home.”
Both men jerked their gazes up when several more jet fighters screamed by overhead.
“Been goin’ on for a while now,” Forbes said, then burped. “I was with a john ’bout a half hour ago, and while I’m doin’ my thing he’s got music on the radio but then the music cut off and then an emergency