What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [61]
The large and swarthy lady who manned the taco stand window (in both the selling-tacos sense and the “I’ve-got-a-hairy-mustache-and-big-arms” sense) poked her head out and gave Festus a look of matronly disapproval. Festus very quietly returned his seat back and tray table to their normal positions. “I don’t know,” he said, removing a greasy sheet of taco wrapper that had stuck to the side of his head. “What do you think about it?”
“Um, I don’t.” There was a slurping sound, and Liam turned to see that the bird, having bombed the squirrel into submission, now had a straw in his mouth and was draining the juice box.
“He also said that Whitford is the Devil,” said Festus, still oblivious to the bird’s antics. “But I don’t think that’s true. I think he’s the Antichrist.”
Liam stared for a longish while, his face full of squinty eyes and knitted eyebrows. “Festus, you are an idiot.” He looked back at the bird, but it had flown away.
Festus opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again, and, with a slight, self-reflective nod, opted to take a sip of his beverage by way of rebuttal. “So,” he said, taking a completely un-novel tack, “what do you think? Could the Governor really be the Antichrist?”
“I don’t really think—”
“No, wait,” said Festus. “Just hear me out.”
Liam sighed. “You know I don’t believe in any of that crap.”
“So, what? I don’t believe that you’re a giant asshole, but you generally do a great job of proving my non-belief to be pretty misguided.”
“Um... blow me?”
“So anyway, there’s a kind of Antichrist checklist in the Book of Daniel. First thing on the list is that the Antichrist will do as he pleases; that he will answer to no Earthly authority. That one’s easy.”
“It’d be really amazing,” said Liam, “if you had the capacity to remember things that were actually useful.”
Festus carried on, an ice-breaking ship plowing right through Liam’s unhelpful commentary. “Second, he will have ‘no regard for the desire of women,’ which supposedly means that he will either be asexual or homosexual. I’m not sure about that,” he said. “Wait, you’ve met him. Do you think he’s gay? He doesn’t seem very gay.”
“Doubt it. But I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Third, either he or his companion will claim to be Jesus. That’s that Camdon guy, right? And fourth, he will appear to survive a fatal injury. Well, he’s had all those heart attacks, right? Right?”
There are only so many things you can say to a raving lunatic, none of which appealed to Liam particularly at that moment. So he sat back again, put his arms behind his head, and closed his eyes, waiting for it to be over.
“And the Antichrist is supposed to start taking over the world. Whitford invaded Louisiana, right?”
“He didn’t invade Louisiana,” said Liam.
“Well, maybe he didn’t actually invade with tanks and stuff, but you said yourself that he now controls most of the oil supply of the most powerful nation in the world.” Festus did the shrugging and hand-waving equivalent of writing “QED” under a proof, and slumped back into his chair, spent.
The bird came back. But now he landed right in the middle of their table, sliding and flapping his wings as he slipped on one of the taco wrappers.
“Whoa,” said Festus, scooting back in his chair. “What the hell?”
The bird turned his head to the side to regard Festus. He took a step forward, toward Festus’ drink.
Festus knocked his chair over as he stood up, evidently feeling a little nonplussed. “Seriously,” he said. “What the hell?”
Liam seemed unfazed. “Oh, relax. It’s just the Thirsty Black Bird of the Apocalypse.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the bird. “Totally fits in with your theory.”
Festus glanced around for a bit of guidance, but found