What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [60]
Liam, however, didn’t notice Festus’ expression. He was therefore blissfully unaware a taco was all that stood between him and a brutal, and probably very messy, death. “What’d the drunk guy say?”
Festus leaned in conspiratorially. “Well, he said that he’d been working for the Governor.”
“A drunk guy, who was in jail, had been working for the Governor? Doing what? Crafting legislation?”
“No, no,” said Festus. “They hired him to find something or steal something. I didn’t quite understand.”
“The word ‘quite’ seems inadequate here,” said Liam. Festus smirked. “So, what did he find? Or steal? Or whatever it was that he actually did?”
“I don’t think he found it, whatever it was. But that’s not the point.” He crumpled his spent taco wrapper and put it on the growing pile of grease-stained papers. “Wait a minute,” said Festus. “Is that yours?” He pointed to a small, oblong object wrapped in yellow paper. It sat in the exact center of the table. Greasy, translucent spots on the wrapper revealed that it was, in fact, a taco.
“No, I ate two already.”
“Me too,” said Festus, his voice full of the kind of wonder that most people reserve for really special occasions, like meeting space aliens or discovering a lost continent.
“That means—”
“Must be an extra—”
“—bonus taco!” said Festus. “Sweet Jesus!” Liam pushed it toward Festus, who peeled back the wrapper and, shrugging off the anatomical constraints imposed by his standard-sized, H. sapiens sapiens dentition, tore off an impossibly large chunk. They sat in silence while Festus, his head tilting this way and that, tried to chew half a taco all at once. His facial expression slowly changed as he chewed and chewed and chewed, so that he began to look less like he was eating breakfast than taking care of some onerous chore, but eventually he got it down.
“He told me—” Festus paused for another bite, “some other stuff.”
Liam ignored Festus again. He was now watching as a black-feathered bird repeatedly dive bombed a squirrel. The squirrel had one of those little juice boxes that children drink from, and the bird appeared to be, for whatever reason, very upset by this fact. The bird dove and missed, flapping his wings frantically as he turned around in midair for another attack. He swooped downward again, but this time the squirrel was prepared, and he leapt up to mount a counterattack. The two collided in midair, crashed to the ground (it was a tiny, bird-and-squirrel-sized crash), and rolled around a bit – a mass of fluffy tail and feathers locked in a manic, mortal battle. The bird finally extricated himself from the squirrel’s clutches, fussing and flapping his way off a few yards. He clawed at the gravel on the ground as the two creatures eyed each other.
After a second, the bird launched himself into the air again, but this time he didn’t go straight for the squirrel. Instead he hovered over the fuzzy rodent, holding what appeared to be smallish but not insubstantial stone in his claws. The squirrel stared up at the bird, and the bird stared back for a couple of seconds before releasing the stone, which smacked the squirrel on the noggin. The squirrel teetered a bit, shook his head, and ran off toward some bushes.
Festus, completely oblivious to the raptor-rodent death match that had just taken place, continued to regale Liam with his tales from the municipal jail. “Whitford,” he said, “either has already obtained – or is attempting to obtain – some kind of biological weapon. Or poison gas. One of those. I’m not sure which.”
Liam snapped his head around. “What?”
Festus nodded as he inhaled the last bite of taco.
“That’s insane. Crazy talk. Doesn’t make any sense at all.” Liam leaned forward, suddenly the grand inquisitor. “How do you know that the guy you talked to wasn’t just another crazy conspiracy theorist like you?”
“Wrrmmph?” said Festus, signaling indignance through a mouthful of taco. “He’s not. He said Whitford’s working with that TV preacher – Camdon? Cadmon? Condom? I don’t know. Sounds pretty wacky to