What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [96]
“Holy shit!” said Festus, as he watched the two men topple over and disappear from view behind the edge of the hood. He leaned forward, pressing his face up against the windshield to try to get a better view. And then he realized that this was an opportunity. He wavered for a moment before shifting over to the driver’s seat. Festus hesitated again, checked to see if the two idiots were still busy, and eased the handle back to open the driver’s door.
With the door open, he could hear grunting noises punctuated by the occasional “son of a bitch!” and “you goddamned pansy!” He slid down off the seat and dropped to the ground. There was a door into the church just fifteen feet away. The alternative was to head back over toward where the military guys were stationed. Festus scampered over to the door and, finding it unlocked, went inside.
The door made a clicking sound as its spring hinge pulled it closed, and Wayne perked up from where Jimmy had him pinned to the ground. “He’s getting’ away!” he said. “Ow!”
“Shut up,” said Jimmy.
“Would you get off me, you dang cretin? That hippie just went inside!”
“Sheeyat.” The two men set aside their differences for the moment in favor of the bigger problem of Festus P. Bongwater having an unsupervised visit at headquarters. They jumped up, each covered in dust and sporting what looked very much like sex hair, and ran after the hippie who was loose inside Driftwood Fellowship Church.
Chapter 36. Why Aren’t There Any Naked Ladies?
When one naked guy jumps out in front of your car, you think, “Huh, that’s strange,” and hope that he doesn’t leave any of his nastier, more personal bits stuck in the radiator grill. When the road is filled with naked guys cavorting, frolicking, and otherwise doing unseemly, naked things, you begin to realize: Something is up.
“Something is up,” said El Jefe, chomping his cigar. The three other old men in the car nodded in agreement. Actually, only Angus and Virgil nodded in agreement. The third – Josiah – had this old-man thing where he kind of nodded all the time, so it was hard to tell whether he was agreeing or not.
In the middle of the back seat, the Lord of the Underworld and putative angel of divine vengeance did not nod. He sat quietly, bopping slightly to the swing of the big-band music coming from the car’s cassette deck, looking this way and that as the unclothed hordes cavorted.
“Are those men – do they – are they naked?” asked Josiah. He was the eldest of the group, and his sight wasn’t great.
“No, Josiah,” said El Jefe. “They’re just wearing flesh-colored body suits. It’s one of those new-fangled fads.” It wasn’t good for a man of Josiah’s age to get too excited.
“What?”
“Flesh-colored suits.”
“What?” Josiah couldn’t hear real well either. It happens. Most companies, militarized or not, have mandatory retirement ages, and can therefore avoid problems like the deafness or general crabbiness or grade-A, goat-shit senility that accompanies aging. This, however, was the militant wing of a group whose minimum age for eligibility was the trigger for most groups to start distributing gold watches and bus tickets to Florida. Compounding this problem was the fact that advancement through the Krijgsheren Wijsheid was via seniority, which meant that all the guys in charge were themselves too addled to realize that something ought to be done about all the old, addled guys running around in the group. Josiah hefted his large, military-issue shotgun and started ranting and mumbling nasty, old man things at all the whippersnappers out there in the street in their weird goddamned clothes.
In the front seat, Virgil, a spry 78-year-old, did kind of a slow, contemplative head bob as he watched the world through the windshield. Something was definitely up – there really were a lot more naked guys than usual. They seemed to be appearing out of nowhere (but then, to really old guys, lots of things seem to appear