Excerpted from GOD IS A KILLER: ALPHA EDITION, by Max Thrax, via APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL PRESS. Available now.
1
At dusk, Terry “Touchdown” Donovan unzipped the tent flap and watched the wind blow through the fir boughs. Under his sleeping bag, he had six thousand dollars in large bills; next to the money, a loaf of bread and a Glock. The revolver he kept unloaded down the front of his jeans.
He yawned, stretched his arms. Wondered if it was safe to walk around the ravine.
For months, Touchdown had cooked meth every evening with Dog Boy and Dan the Nature Man in a barn near Eliot, New Hampshire. But then Sheriff Fitzroy drove over and accused them of stealing his rightful product. No one was happy about it. Least of all Dan. Five minutes later, Dan was dead.
Touchdown lay on his elbows and closed the flap. Rather than take a walk, he decided to go back to sleep.
He woke up a few minutes later, when he heard someone, or some animal, scratching at the outside of his tent. Touchdown reached into his pants, slid the revolver across his chest. He loaded it and swung back the cylinder.
“Dog Boy,” he said, “is that you?”
Touchdown waited for a response. He held up the gun, pulled down the zipper—no one.
Then he craned his neck to the left and noticed a man below a beech tree.
“I come bearing the Good News,” the man said. “Have you met your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”
“Not today,” Touchdown said.
“Just a few minutes.”
“Let me be nice, all right? I’m trying to be—”
“If you change your mind,” the man said, “I’ll be around.”
The man disappeared behind the beech tree. Touchdown heard boots moving away from the clearing, toward Brompton and the southern woods.
Touchdown had a headache. Wished he’d brought some weed. He didn’t want to be alone, pointing a gun at some stranger. It was all wrong.
He knew it was bad. He’d learned there never were any good times.
As Touchdown wondered if Dog Boy left the lab alive, he heard a twig snap.
Ten yards away, under another beech tree, the man sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.
Touchdown said, “I told you to leave.”
The man was about forty years old: he had blue eyes and ragged red hair, his face streaked with dirt. He looked more like a drifter than a cop.
“The woods belong to all men,” the drifter said. “Not one of us can say, ‘I own it.’ It was made for you, me, the rest of creation.”
“You don’t know me.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Not your last name, your hometown, your date of birth, or your Social Security number. But I do know some things about you. As two men, we have some things in common. We were both born of a woman. You ever think about it? In Genesis, Eve is born from Adam’s rib. Woman came from man. Now man comes from woman. How do you figure that out?”
“I—uh—don’t.”
“Do you know Revelation? Of course, we’re losing time. Believe me, we’re all losing. By the way, if you don’t mind, may I ask if my friend passed through?”
“I think you should—I-I mean—”
“Sit down, son.”
What the hell, thought Touchdown.
The cross-legged drifter was on a Jesus trip. Weird but harmless. Dog Boy had time to arrive before nightfall. Rather than draw Forest Service, Touchdown would wait it out. If he listened and nodded a few more minutes, the man would leave him alone.
“You’re on vacation, Mister—?”
“Touchdown,” he told the drifter. “Hassles from the wife. These days, I’m always leaving town.”
“I’ll tell you my story. Two days ago, I walked south from Berlin. Now here I sit. Isn’t that something?”
The man was a local, some shed-dweller. “You live around here?” said Touchdown.
“In a way, yes. In a way—not yet. A man like you understands man and his law, its enforcement. I got out of prison… Can you guess why they locked me up? Something I didn’t even do.”
Touchdown nodded at the man. He and the drifter had things in common after all.
“I was a known guy and got framed in Vermont,” he said. “Montpelier police said I robbed a liquor store. First, I never robbed a liquor store. Second, I never been to Montpelier. I don’t fuck with the Green State.”
The man ignored him. “They said I had weapons, Touchdown. If I had a few guns, it was none of their business. I was legal. Legal according to the laws of man…”
“I hear you. I once—”
“At that time I led a tribe, the Eternal Nations in the Wilderness of New England. None holier, none worthier, none closer to the Word. I have words, too. Took them from the Book. In the old days, I called myself Cyrus—a king, a great liberator of—”
“Is that the—uh—Bible—?”
“That’s the book. But I don’t need a king’s name to be right and godly. So please, call me MacDougall.”
“You were looking for someone?” said Touchdown.
“A friend,” MacDougall said. “Like you and me, a believer. Easy to recognize: rubber boots, shaved head. Cream and a razor. And lo, it never rusts. See him?”
“No.”
Touchdown heard a voice from the tent: “Good one, Mac.”
He turned around and saw a skinhead raising the Glock he’d left under his sleeping bag.
“Six grand,” the skinhead said. “Moldy bread, plus the piece.”
Touchdown put his head in his hands—there never were any good times.
“Take the cash,” he said. “Take the gun, whatever you want.”
“Reasonable,” MacDougall said to the skinhead. “But our friend Touchdown has seen us, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Listen,” Touchdown said, “I’m wanted in Bentham County, I’m wanted in five or six others. I’m the last guy who’d talk to the cops.”
“But we know you’re here under Mount Hamilton,” MacDougall said, walking over to Touchdown. “And you know we’re here. Small county. How long until Forest Service got you grabbing your ankles?”
“I won’t tell them.”
MacDougall stepped back through the clearing, to the edge of the woods. “Do you know the Ten Commandments?”
Touchdown wondered: was he quick enough to slip left, pull the revolver, shoot the skinhead? “Sure,” he said, touching his belt. “Who doesn’t?”
“What’s the first commandment?”
“You tell me.”
“Thou shalt worship no other gods,” said MacDougall. “And from it thou shalt not stray. Understand that only God, the ultimate judge, has power over life and death. It’s not my right to take a life. Not at all. But since the end is near, here’s some wisdom: flee, take refuge, make thine way to a shelter. If you’ve been chosen, God seats you at His right hand. If not—a big not—you burn.”
It was Touchdown’s moment. But as he swiveled his neck, the Glock went off twice and he felt a terrible burning between his shoulders. He dropped the gun and sank to his knees.
“That was stupid,” the skinhead said.
“Please,” MacDougall said. “Respect the man.”
“It was stupid,” the skinhead said. “You want to pretend it was smart?”
Touchdown heard voices, but felt only the fire in his back, as though someone was pouring boiling water on him, and he blacked out.
2
When Touchdown woke, the men were still talking.
“How much,” asked MacDougall, “does a wound like that bleed?”
“Depends,” the skinhead said. “Size, distance, the fitness of this fucking drifter. I never shot a Glock, not even in the Brotherhood.”
“You know entry wounds.”
“Not really.”
“How much is he going to bleed?”
“If we left him here,” Brewster said, “he’d never make it to the road. Too many rocks, too much scree. Can’t remember the path up the ridge.”
“It wouldn’t be justice leaving him here.”
“You going to heal him?”
“Of course not,” MacDougall said. “I’ll say it’s wrong to leave a man flopping in the dirt.”
“Shoot him?”
“It would be right.”
Touchdown heard the firing pin, then nothing.
3
In the tent, MacDougall flipped through the roll of bills. “The Lord giveth—and giveth—and giveth more. The day has brought us fruit, and by that we shall know it. Now, tell me— what’s our purpose in life?”
Brewster tried to recall the verses: “Lord of lords, light of lights, let us be as the two lamps in Revelations which—uh—”
“Which followed you—”
“Which, uh, followed you until the end of the world. Have mercy upon me, and a small group of people like me—”
“Sleep,” said MacDougall.
4
It was almost sunrise. MacDougall and Brewster sat on the bank of the Sagmo River.
“We’ll hunt when the light comes,” MacDougall told him. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I don’t have a watch.”
“You don’t need a watch,” MacDougall said. “Look and see if it’s light, that’s all.”
Brewster yawned. He turned over on his side, untied his boot and shook out the pebbles.
“That bum’s bread,” he said, “was rotten. Two days since we ate real food. As if killing the guy wasn’t bad enough—we aren’t full in the belly.”
“Did he deserve to live?”
“No, but—”
“Trust in providence,” MacDougall said. “Trust, too, in the prophet MacDougall. See how I tracked that drifter? I’m no stranger to it. Years ago, back in North Carolina, I used to shoot squirrels and sell them to the Mexicans. Skinned them, too. I kept the tails on, so they knew they weren’t rats.”
The sun floated over the mountains. MacDougall snapped off two birch branches, stripped them, and sharpened the ends with his pocketknife. Then he took the vagrant’s bread from its wrapper and laid it on a patch of pine needles.
“Six grand,” Brewster said. “We could get more money, a lot more—roadside spots are ripe.”
“Show faith,” MacDougall said. “No sense wasting bullets or making noise. Get thou off it. Stay obedient and He will provide bread enough. Think thou on it.”
“It’s hard,” Brewster said, “to even think right now.”
A sheriff’s cruiser rolled up the path above the river and the two men ducked behind a fir. “Babylon,” whispered MacDougall. The car passed the clearing, driving off further down the road to the highway. With the Buick gone, the two cellmates of Berlin Federal resumed their watch. They waited fifteen minutes, maybe thirty—it was hard to tell. Finally, as MacDougall rose to wake his legs, he heard a rustle in the leaves.
“I see it,” said Brewster.
MacDougall scanned between the birches, spotted a raccoon. A bottom feeder, he thought. An oversized rat. But if providence delivered a raccoon, he’d eat a raccoon. He believed in the Lord.
MacDougall stepped from tree to tree while it sniffed around the bread. From behind a beech stump, he lunged at the animal and jabbed at it with his stick. The raccoon took off, scurrying on its tiny legs back to the forest.
MacDougall threw his spear in the dirt. He turned to Brewster. “Get that rascal.”
“What?”
“Run.”
In his suspenders, rubber boots, and camouflage pants, Brewster sprinted up the saddle toward the ravine. Fifty yards back MacDougall jogged past boulders and the old scree. He was too slow to catch vermin and let the skinhead run.
“Brewster!” he called out. “Stay off the ridge.”
The two men chased the animal below the edge of the mountain. Out of breath, MacDougall stopped his feet. He leaned forward and placed his palms on his knees. When he looked up, Brewster and the raccoon had disappeared.
A loud thump sounded from the ravine. He heard Brewster cry.
MacDougall walked the ridge in small, measured steps. Halfway down he saw the raccoon sitting beneath a shrub, blinking at him with tiny black eyes.
Nettles and mud clung to Brewster’s face. He had tumbled over rocks and heavy brush, and lay on his back a hundred feet from the river. When MacDougall moved closer, he noticed Brewster’s left knee was crooked. A bone stuck out of his leg.
“All right, son?”
“Doctor,” Brewster said. “I need a goddamn doctor.”
“Walk,” said MacDougall. “Take up thy pallet.”
“Right now?”
In the foothills, the morning breeze felt cool and pleasant; the Sagmo River ran out slowly to the ocean; a blue jay swooped low between birch trees, warbled its song to the wilderness.
“Minute to pray,” said MacDougall.
He went to the river and looked up at the cliffs. From the rushes, he heard Brewster moan.
He ignored these petitions.
True, MacDougall told himself, Brewster was dying.
The whole world was dying. For where, in this dying world, in Babylon, lived the real disciples? Where lived the new Andrew, new Peter? Why did God give him Judas, the Silver Pieces Man?
If Brewster now walked to the Eternal Mansion, he would walk due to God’s grace, not to forceps, scalpel, or some disease-ridden blood bag. For never would the hands of physicians molest MacDougall or his men.
5
“Take up thy pallet,” said MacDougall, “and walk.”
Brewster sat up rubbing his fat fingers against his knee. “Heal me,” he said. “You got the power, you’re the prophet—the goddamn prophet, Mac.”
“Yes,” MacDougall said. “But I have not the strength. Again the Lord calls me. On the banks of the Sagmo, I shall receive His power.”
MacDougall stood on the water’s edge and looked across the current. Thirty feet to the opposite bank, three hundred to the woods. Thirty miles to the Eternal Mansion.
A long walk—too long for Silver Pieces Man.
Did he, MacDougall, lack faith in his disciple?
Yes, but even Jesus had only so much faith. Hanging from the Cross, He asked God why He’d been forsaken.
Would God give him a sign?
Hello, Mac.
Elena.
“Brewster’s a cripple,” MacDougall said, “and he wants a doctor.”
Your cripple walks as God commands. What does He command?
“To raise you, the prophet Elena Dunphy, from the dead.”
Will you raise me, MacDougall, with this lame-leg on your back?
“No,” he said. “I-I won’t. My disciple slows me down.”
And lo—the Lord commanded it.
Was Brewster a man large in size, crude in manners, slow in learning, bent in knee, pious until the end? No, he was not. Not at all. He was a traitor to the Nations. Silver Pieces Man.
Across the ravine, the blue jay twitted its melody. Slowly to the ocean ran the Sagmo. The air smelled of wet dirt.
MacDougall coughed and squatted down behind Brewster. The skinhead drew a deep breath, rested his head on MacDougall’s boot.
“Close your eyes,” said MacDougall. “In a moment, you will leave these woods. Think of the Kingdom as we say the Healing Prayer.”
Together they intoned the words:
Blessed is the wound
Blessed is the skin
Blessed is the bone
Blessed be the throne
On which He sits.
Blessed is the touch
Blessed is the hand
Blessed is the tongue
Of the Holy One
Who heals us now.
Over time and space
The creator of the race
Rules the world
And all its flesh.
Blessed is the skin
Blessed is the oil
Rubbed on the sores.
Blessed be the door
That opens to health
MacDougall removed his clothes. He reached in his back pocket, checked the revolver. “Y-You stopped,” Brewster said. “We got to keep praying. Put your fingers on my leg. You got to heal—”
The cylinder held two bullets.
MacDougall wiped his nose and pressed the muzzle against Brewster’s forehead.
— Max Thrax is managing editor of APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL. His novel God is a Killer: Alpha Edition is available from APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL PRESS.