What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [101]
“You just hung up on my boss?” asked Lola, her eyes wide.
“Uh, no. He’s on hold.” He handed the phone to Lola.
She looked at the handset, seeing that it was clearly off, and that her boss was not holding the line. Lola shot him a nasty look, but only for an instant because the phone started buzzing, her boss’ name lighting up the caller ID display.
“Hello? I’m so sorry. I don’t know—” She glared at Liam again. “I know, sir. Right. Okay. I will. We will. Goodbye.” She flipped the phone shut. “He wants us back at the office. What the heck is up with the rain? It’s red.”
Liam’s windshield wipers flapped back and forth in a frantic, almost maniacal fit of ineffectiveness, smearing what looked like dirty – maybe muddy – rainwater around.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think—? Is this that supposed to be ‘blood rain,’ like on the news?”
Liam glanced up at the top of the windshield, then at the side windows. “I guess.” He shrugged.
“It’s disgusting.” Lola cracked the window open a bit, and ran her finger along the edge. “It is blood. Ew.”
He sighed. “It’s fucked up, is what it is.”
They sat in silence for a moment “Liam, Cas says we’re supposed to head back to the office.”
“Your office?”
“Yes. He says Whitford’s closed the borders entirely. Shut down the airports. Something’s going on.”
He downshifted, and they passed another bus. “I’ll drop you off at the shop so you can get your car.”
“No, we need to do what Cas says.”
“He’s your boss. You need to do what he says. And I’ll drop you off at the shop so that you can do that.”
“Fine,” she said, and turned to stare out the window. “You know,” she said after a few minutes, “it’s kind of hard…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?”
“Well, it’s just … all this stuff – the earthquakes, the weird rain, the locusts, the frogs—”
“Toads.”
She glared at him. “Anyway,” she said. “It’s getting harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that something is going on.”
“Well, yeah,” said Liam. “Something is going on. It’s raining fucked up rain.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“What, so now you believe Festus?”
“I didn’t say that.”
They sat in silence for a couple of awkward minutes before Lola spoke again. “What the hell happened in there?”
“What?” Liam shot her a confused look. “Back there? Preston’s?”
“Yes.”
“Um, well, I got hit in the head with a frying pan. Sucked.”
“Right,” she said, but Liam just nodded and kept driving. “So…”
Liam glanced over, surprised to find that the conversation was still going. “So. Uh, it sucked. Still hurts, in fact.”
“Yeah, but— I thought you were supposed to be some kind of superman or something. I heard all sorts of stuff—something about you and Whitford…”
He gave her a grim look. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
Chapter 38. Running Wild as a Dog in the House of the Lord
Festus hurried as quietly as he could down a dimly-lit passage. The painted, cinderblock walls and well-scuffed flooring made him think he was probably in a utility hallway of some sort – probably for deliveries. This hypothesis found strong support from the fact that he’d already passed a sign with an arrow and the word “Deliveries” printed in bold, five-inch tall letters. He paused to listen. There were voices, lots of them, coming from somewhere up ahead. It sounded like a crowd of people shouting, or maybe even cheering. Maybe there was a sporting match going on? Not being a particularly sporty type, he had no idea whether that was even a plausible idea.
“Hippie!”
Festus twisted around and saw the two hillbillies, Jimmy and Wayne. Apparently they’d settled their differences. He marveled at the awkward gaits of two men trying to run in cowboy boots, but then, realizing that this wasn’t just an academic exercise,