What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [69]
“Put your pants back on,” said Liam, and they left Raju alone in the store.
Outside the shop, Lola headed straight for a sedate-looking sedan with four sedate doors and painted a sedate shade of maroon. Liam and Festus did not, opting instead to stand and stare at what they regarded as one of the more shocking things they’d seen that morning. After a couple of seconds, Lola turned and saw a look of horror mixed with disgust mixed with disdain on Liam’s face. Festus looked afraid.
“What?” asked Lola. Liam made a face like he was having gastronomic difficulties and gestured in the direction of his own car. “Oh, it’s not that bad,” she said.
Liam opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out, so he looked a little bit like a fish.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess we’re taking your car.”
“Shotgun!” said Festus.
A few minutes later, Festus sat in the back seat, alone and nursing a bruised ego.
Liam waved his hand in Festus’ general direction. “Tell her.” And Festus did. He told her about Whitford, and Cadmon’s army, and the poison gas. He told her about his repeated attempts to rebuff the Hawaiian guy’s romantic advances. He told her he was thinking about shaving his beard. She told him to shut up about the beard already.
“He didn’t give any details about the weapon?”
“No,” said Festus, “but he did mention the—the project you guys keep—”
“Baphomet?”
“Yes. That one.”
“What did he say about it?”
“Well…” Festus pursed his lips and scratched his beard.
“Anything you can remember,” said Lola.
Festus looked up, his faced pained. “It was jail, you know?”
“You spend a lot of time in jail?”
Festus’ expression did not change. “Yeah, you know, more than I’d like, really. You know, the guy seemed drunk or high or something. I don’t know. He wasn’t making a ton of sense. I would have ignored him except he kept mentioning Whitford’s name.” He suddenly braced himself in the backseat, gripping an extra seatbelt and a window post. “Hang on,” he said.
“What?”
“We’re about to get onto the highway.”
They got onto the highway.
“Oh my god!” said Lola. She hadn’t spent a lot of time riding in racecars or stunt planes, and hadn’t ever been strapped to the front of a rocket, and so was therefore inadequately prepared for Liam’s enthusiastic approach to entering onto a freeway. There was far more tire squealing, swerving, and lung-crushing acceleration involved than she’d expected or might have, had she been behind the wheel, deemed absolutely necessary. And she expressed her feelings about the situation by invoking the name of a guy who’d been nailed to a tree two millennia earlier. “Jesus!”
“Yeah,” said Festus. “I know.”
Chapter 25. Beat Me Up, Scotty
There are parts of downtown Austin that, but for the lack of tumbleweeds – and, of course, an overabundance of tallish buildings, paved streets, and traffic-control devices – could easily pass for a desolate, isolated scene in a Western movie. Which is just to say that there are parts of downtown Austin that are almost apocalyptically empty. In particular, there is a section that sits east of the state Capitol Building, where various and sundry bureaucratic monstrosities give way to a slew of parking garages that all the important political types, lobbyists, and bureaucrats use before scurrying off to conduct the business of the Lone Star State. Most days of the week, this area sits pretty much entirely empty, wanting only for the occasional rolling tumbleweed to transform the sun-scorched canyon of concrete and steel into the Old West. On Sundays, even the ghosts, rodents, and bugs make themselves scarce – a twelve-foot, winged scrotum could host a mythical-creature dance party and no one would be the wiser.
In the