Snake Handlin' Man (6 page)

Then Eddie’s toes hit Overalls, who rolled on the ground, and Eddie fell. He squeezed his trigger as he fell—
click
.

He hit the sand shoulders-first, hard, and lost all his wind. Vision spinning, he tried to keep his grip on the tent pole. He could see that the white canvas overhead was sagging quickly towards him, but he pushed up, hoping against hope that Overalls wouldn’t bite his head off in the meantime, and kept the tent from collapsing.

And Overalls didn’t bite him. Overalls rolled out of the way, squirming to get out of the tent.

Eddie lurched to his knees, climbing the pole like a ladder. He let the shotgun down to his hip and whipped out the Glock. The tent was down and blocking his view, but he knew his friends were all behind him or to the side because the tent was still up, so he pointed the pistol at the canvas, thumbed the selective fire switch to automatic mode and squeezed off two short bursts.

The gun bucked pleasantly in his hand and punched two streaks into the white cloth. When the tent opened again in the breeze, Eddie saw what had sprung past him—

the Nehushtan, the red serpent on the cross, had joined the fray. It slithered ahead of the lurching tent, throwing wide jaws that were impossibly elastic. A huge snake, thick around as a tree trunk and with a gaping mouth at each end of its body, rose hissing to contest its right of way.

The ruby Nehushtan swallowed the human-sized snake monster in a single bite.

“Holy Moses,” Eddie muttered, but he saw the path to the van opening ahead of them. “Run!” he barked, and then he remembered the tent: “I mean, jog!”

They hustled down the hill. The van was two hundred feet away, and Eddie emptied out the Glock’s clip at a thing with two heads. One hundred feet, and Mike tripped over a hole in the ground, like the entrance to a prairie dog’s warren. He slipped and fell to one knee, and Jim dragged him to his feet.

Fifty feet and the tent fell away. It just slipped right off the crossbeams and bounced to the ground behind them like a bride’s thrown veil.

Irving stopped singing and shrieked. Eddie looked over his shoulder, afraid he’d see the preacher lying on the ground. To his relief, and prodded by Jim, the man was still running, and he still held the cross on his shoulder.

But the Nehushtan wasn’t eating snakes anymore. It was slithering towards Phineas Irving like it wanted to get back on its pole. Despite all it had eaten, it was the same size as it had always been and moved quick as thinking.

Behind it, in a wall, the mutant snake-people and the rattlers rolled down the hill towards them.

“Start the car!” Eddie yelled. “Reverse!”

Mike was surprisingly fleet of foot with an army of snakes on his tail, and the big man beat Eddie to the Dodge, throwing himself into the driver’s seat and gunning the engine to life. Jim grabbed the preacher by the scruff of his neck just as the rubescent serpent slithered back onto its perch and hurled the man and the artifact both into the back seat of the van. Twitch didn’t waste time or risk a bottleneck, simply changing shape into his falcon self and bursting into flight over the crappy brown van.

“In!” Mike yelled. The mongooses scrambled into the van as if taking his orders.

Eddie stepped into the back seat of the van and grabbed the hand strap behind the shotgun seat. “Go!” he roared, and jammed his second clip into the Glock. Still set to automatic fire, he squeezed the trigger into the wave of descending serpent flesh, letting the snakes have it as Mike threw the Dodge into reverse and slammed backwards down the road towards town.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Eddie dropped Many Arms in his tracks, if only for a moment, and sent Snake Legged Man lurching sideways behind brush for cover. As he ran out of ammo, Jim joined him from the back seat, firing with one of the pistols lying on the floor of the van. Phineas Irving’s Enfield stayed silent, though. Eddie spared him a glance and saw that the man was shaking. He was conscious, and looked lucid, but he looked scared half to death. His mongoose guard dogs slunk around his feet in the trash that cluttered the van’s floor.

They retreated from the rise, the preacher’s trailer disappearing with the mob of snakes. When Mike swung the van around in a quick turn where the road was a little wider, Twitch flashed in through the open door, hitting the grease-stained seat beside Eddie in his leather-clad drummer shape.

“That was amusing,” the fairy said.

“It was unexpected, that’s for sure,” Eddie muttered. “Hey, Irving, what happened back there?”

Irving shook his bristly blond head and shrugged. “You mean with the Nehushtan?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, feeling irritated, “I mean when the Nehushtan turned into a live snake and went and ate all the other snakes.”

“That’s in the Bible, too,” Irving said. “I think.”

“Yeah, but not the Nehushtan. That was Moses’s staff when he fought the magicians of Pharaoh—unless maybe those are the same thing.” Eddie looked back to be sure the pursuit was out of range, and then slammed shut the side door of the van. “Hey, what do I know? But what I mean is, did you know the Nehushtan was going to get down off its cross and start taking names?”

Irving laughed, nervous. “No. I only knew that it kept snakes out of the tent, better than my hexes.”

“Maybe the big red snake will heal Adrian after all,” Mike suggested, looking at Eddie in the rear view mirror. “Maybe we should go pick him up and heal him and get outta this town.”

Eddie looked at Irving and saw the fear in the man’s eyes. “Nah,” he said. “Faith don’t work that way. We gotta go get the lamia. Still, the Nehushtan will probably come in very handy.” The snake was dormant again, dimly red under its furred coat of dust.

“I’m going to guess Mike will volunteer for the milking job,” Twitch sparkled.

“Hey,” Mike objected.

Jim reached past Eddie and pointed forward.

Eddie had been resolutely not looking ahead, afraid of what he’d see, but he looked now. There again was the frozen field of ice and the wind-gnawed heads protruded from it, groaning soundlessly and staring at Eddie.

“What?” Eddie mumbled.

“I think he means the cars,” Mike said. “Look how full the lot is. It was totally empty before.”

“Maybe there’s a sale,” Twitch chirped.

Eddie grunted. He tried to shake away the vision of ice, failed, and then tried to squint past it. The parking lot around the three-story building was full of cars. Also, ahead of them, the sun inched into late afternoon.

“I would have preferred an emptier house,” Eddie said. He felt tired. His burns hurt. There were two hours left on his watch’s timer. “You up for this, preacher?”

Phineas Irving shook, but he gripped the Nehushtan with both hands and nodded. “I want to help your friend,” he agreed. “And I want to stop Apep.”

“Load up,” Eddie told them all. He reached over the shotgun seat for the ammo boxes he kept in the glove compartment.

***

Chapter Six

Eddie knew that to everyone else, he looked like he was walking drunk. But the others couldn’t see the frozen heads, and he couldn’t bring himself to just walk through them. In his rational mind, he knew that the sun, dropping towards the horizon now, was still fierce, but the cool desert breeze bit into his flesh like a piranha. He shuddered under the black-eyed stares of the damned and tried to stay focused on the crumbling brick cube ahead of them, even as he stumbled from side to side through the obstacle course of frozen heads.

Jim put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie looked up, catching a quizzical look from the titan of a singer.

“Same old bullshit,” Eddie lied, shaking himself. “A little worse than usual, maybe, but nothing new.”

“What do you mean worse?” Mike asked.

“What is it, your job to ask all the dumb, irritating questions?” Eddie chomped at him, but then he felt guilty. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Something bad happened here, I’m guessing. Some kind of terrible sin, maybe.”

Twitch laughed lightly. From someone else, it might have sounded like mockery, but it lifted Eddie’s spirits a little. “Sin,” the fairy giggled, “is for humans.”

“Yeah, it is,” Eddie agreed.

Metal shutters had been dropped over the storefront windows of the Sears. It seemed a little extravagant for a box store in the middle of nowhere, but maybe that’s why the Apep worshippers had chosen it. As Eddie and the band stalked around the edges of the gravel parking lot, he saw a couple who looked like small ranchers, wearing boots, yoked shirts and blue jeans, walk in through the swinging glass doors. Eddie didn’t see any guards.

That made him uncomfortable.

“How trained are your mongooses?” he asked the preacher.

Phineas Irving shrugged. “Like a dog, I guess,” he said. “Not as much as that, really. They fight snakes by instinct. Fortunately, they have really good instincts.”

Eddie had hoped he might be able to send the animals in as scouts somehow. “I’d give a lot for a decent wizard right now,” he said, thinking of Adrian and wishing he could turn invisible.

“Sorry,” Irving muttered.

“Never mind.” Eddie spotted something at the side of the building. “Twitch,” he told the fairy, “I’m glad you can fly.” He pointed and then set out at a jog.

It wouldn’t pay to forget that Overalls, Lady Legs and the other mutant snake-men were somewhere out behind them, and coming their way.

The building’s shadow should have given Eddie relief from the heat as he rolled to a stop underneath a fire escape; instead, it added to his sensation that he was freezing to death. He gritted his teeth, forced himself not to shiver, and looked up. The iron ladder bolted to the side of the building as an emergency exit only ran halfway down its side, but then it had a second half on tracks, that could be unlatched and pushed down from above.

Twitch hit the top of the fire escape in falcon shape and immediately became the spiked, leather-bar-garbed drummer. He skittered down the ladder like a monkey and kicked open the latch.

“Easy!” Eddie hissed, but too late. The ladder bumped, rattled and squealed like a hinge that needed oiling, but it dropped. Jim stepped forward and caught it easily before it hit the bottom of its descent, cutting off what might otherwise have been a very loud noise.

“Thanks,” Eddie said to the singer.

Jim shrugged, slid the ladder easily down to its full extension, and started climbing up.

“I’ll go last,” Eddie told them, and sent Irving and Mike up the ladder ahead of him. Mike climbed reasonably well, for a big guy, but Irving moved slow, humping the Nehushtan on one shoulder and the Enfield on the other as he went. Then Eddie climbed up the rungs. Halfway up, he grabbed a bit of rope that was knotted around the top rung of the sliding half and pulled it up after him, latching the ladder back into place and then joining the others on the gravel-strewn rooftop.

There were air conditioning units, a small water tower and a gas generator on the rooftop. The way inside was a door at the top of a staircase. Eddie pulled at the handle and found it locked. “Mike?” he said.

“Sure,” Mike said, no problem. The bass player had grown up running in gangs and had some useful skills. “I just need a credit card.”

“Credit card?” Eddie snapped. “Do you think we’re here to go
shopping
?”

“
Chingón
,” Mike laughed. “I can open this door, but I need a credit card to do it.” He looked around at the band. “Nobody? Nobody’s got a credit card?”

The band stared back dully. Eddie shrugged. “Bad risks,” he deadpanned. “I guess when Satan got my soul, he dinged my credit score, too.”

Phineas Irving shoved the Nehushtan into the crook of his neck and shoulder and rummaged in his pockets. “How about this?” he asked, and held out a driver’s license.

Mike took it. “It’s expired,” he noted. “Pennsylvania.”

Irving nodded. “I’m kind of on the lam,” he said, and pointed at the big red snake on his shoulder.

“Isn’t everyone?” Twitch cracked wise.

“Stop reading the damn thing and open the door,” Eddie said gruffly. He took the Remington in both hands and stood watch.

Up here on the rooftop, at least, he didn’t see the frozen heads. Just the metal hulks of building machinery and the dusty blue sky, slowly deepening.

Click
. Good as his word, Mike opened the door. “Easy,” he said. Eddie wished he felt as confident as Mike sounded, and resisted looking at his watch.

“Do we have a plan?” Irving asked, as Eddie headed first into the gloom-shrouded stairwell.

“Sure,” Eddie quipped. “We find the lamia. Then Mike milks it.” The stairs under his boots were concrete, and he shuffled slowly, trying not to trip himself. Under a glowing green exit sign, he hit a landing and turned.

“I do?” Mike asked.

The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and the stairwell plunged from shadow into darkness.

“What’s the matter, Mikey?” Twitch asked. “Boobs are all fine and good until you actually have to touch them?”

“Don’t call me Mikey,” Mike complained. He sounded like he was at the end of the line. “And don’t leave me. I think I’m alone back here.”

“No matter what you may say
,
”
Jim sang from somewhere behind Eddie. He sang in a whisper, but in the stairwell his voice boomed, anyway.

“I always will be true.

No matter how far away,

I’ll always be with you.”

Eddie chuckled. “You in love, Jim?”

“You said he was a mute,” Irving squeaked.

“Nah, I said he was
cursed
,” Eddie reminded the preacher. “Strictly speaking, that wasn’t quite true, either. He’s just trying to avoid unwanted attention.”

“By singing?” Irving asked. “Like
that?
”

“Why don’t you do it more often?” Mike asked. “We could have, like, conversations, instead of you just pointing and looking serious and then Eddie talking all the time.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a conversation entirely by singing?” Twitch demanded.

Eddie bumped his toes into a door at the bottom of the stairs. “Hold on,” he urged the others. “Slow up.”

“He could make up his own words and put it to music,” Mike suggested. “Kind of scat-singing. Like,” and the bass player burst into sing-song, “
hey, Mike, how about you pick this lock for us?
”

“That’s cheating,” Eddie said. “It’s just talking with pitch, and it don’t count.”

“Why?” Mike pushed. “I mean, if they can’t hear music?”

“Who’s
they?
” Irving asked.

“Uh … Satan,” Mike said. “And those guys.”

Eddie felt something brush against his feet. He jumped almost out of his skin, and then realized it was probably a mongoose. “Just having a pitch to it doesn’t make a sound music,” Eddie said. He found the door handle, and pulled. This one was locked, too.

“It doesn’t?” Twitch asked.

“Rhythm section,” Eddie muttered. “Mike, get up here and open this door.”

“This from the world’s greatest tambourine player,” Mike grumbled, but down he came. There was grunting and huffing as he stepped on toes and finally tumbled down to the bottom of the steps. “I still have the card,” he said.

Eddie guided him to the door’s handle.

“If just pitch or rhythm was enough to block a sound from the Fallen’s hearing,” he pointed out, “they wouldn’t hear machines working, or animal calls, or just about anything else. They’d be practically deaf. It’s gotta be
music
.”

“He could have code songs,” Mike persisted. “Like ‘Beat It’ could mean ‘run away’. Or he could sing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to mean ‘attack.’”

Eddie shook his head. “I’m gonna let you think about that one on your own, Mike, and tell me why it’s a terrible idea.”

“I don’t understand,” Irving groaned.

“You don’t have to,” Eddie said. “Hang on tight to the Nehushtan, and remember how it drove away those crazy-ass half-snake bastards back at your trailer.”

“Got it,” Mike said, and pulled open the door.

Eddie dragged Mike with him and slunk out onto the top floor of the Sears. They found themselves behind a mock-up of someone’s front room, with a three-part sofa and chair set and an oval glass coffee table. The floor was dimly lit, only a few sections of its fluorescent tube lighting turned on, and no windows.

“Home sweet home,” Mike sneered at the furniture and drew his pistol.

“Don’t knock it,” Eddie shot back. “I miss this stuff.” He saw bodies stacked three deep on the couches and on the floor between them, oozing red from thousands of tiny perforation wounds. They lay in puddles of their own blood, white and drained like slaughtered chickens, but they weren’t dead. They were wiggling.

He looked away.

The others filed out behind them onto the floor.

“Why is the top floor Furniture?” Mike asked. “That just means they have to bring all the floor models up two flights of stairs.”

“No one impulse buys a bed,” Eddie pointed out. “Or at least, anyone who throws around that kind of money doesn’t shop at Sears.”

Mike shrugged. “Maybe they got an elevator, anyway.”

“I hear something,” Twitch said. “It’s rhythmic, so it must not be music.”

“Does it have pitch, too?” Mike snarked.

“Ah, now you’re asking really sophisticated questions, and I’m just the drummer.” Twitch sprang into the air and took flight as a falcon. He flapped his silvery wings and shot across the Furniture section of the Sears, dropping into a wide double-stairwell in the center of the floor.

Jim followed, and the others trailed after the singer. At the stairwell, Jim stopped and looked down. Eddie looked with him, and saw a stack of inflated, life-sized, bowling pin-shaped clowns standing guard over a table of woodscrews. He guessed it might be the junction of Toys and Hardware.

“Of course I thought he had to be a fairy when I saw him,” Irving muttered. “But thinking a thing and actually seeing it are very different.” The preacher shifted the Nehushtan on his shoulder, looking very out of place in the department store. Eddie chuckled. They
all
looked out of place.

“The fairy’s not your problem,” he told the other man. He patted the pole, freeing a falling sift of sand from the ancient wood. “Your problem is that you are our biggest gun. When the fight breaks out, we need to get you into position and unleash the power of your weapon.”

“We’re not in a tent,” Irving said hesitantly.

“You kidding?” Eddie gestured at the floor displays all around them. “What is Sears, what is any big box store, if not just a big tent in a bazaar? And you know that the Nehushtan can rain Hell down all over these things. You don’t
think
it, you
know
it, because of what you’ve
seen
.”

“Faith seems complicated,” Mike said. “I’m glad it’s not me.” He shifted from foot to foot, carefully checking all the corners of the floor as they waited for Twitch to come back.

“Nothing simpler,” Eddie lied. “And the good news is that we’ve got us a powerhouse here, a man whose faith is true and weapons grade.”

Mike snorted. “Weapons grade?” He laughed. “Mierda.”

“It’s true,” Eddie said. “For your faith to be effective against evil, it’s not enough to believe in God. You have to believe in evil, too, and you have to believe that your faith will protect you.”

“So … vampires …” Mike said slowly.

“A cross ain’t enough,” Eddie explained. “On the other hand, a cross in the hands of someone who believes in the cross, and believes in vampires, and believes the cross can stop the bloodsuckers … well, sayonara, Nosferatu.” He patted the Nehushtan again. “The Reverend Irving here believes in snake-mutant sons of bitches, and he knows from personal experience that the Nehushtan is an ass-kicking weapon of heavenly vengeance against them, so his faith is exactly the kind we need.”

“Huh.” Mike scratched himself.

“Of course, we don’t want you to kill the lamia before we milk her.”

“I’m not really a reverend,” Irving said.

“Well, you’re not a Ph.D., either, so I can’t call you
doctor
.” Eddie snorted. “Besides, I kind of like
reverend
.” Irving looked shaky, and sounded none too confident. Eddie wanted to shore up the man’s faith before they got back into the thick of it, but he didn’t quite know how.

“You do it,” Irving said.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?” The preacher tried to push the Nehushtan pole into Eddie’s hands and Eddie resisted. “You saw it work just like I did. You know it works. You carry it and I’ll shoot the rifle.”

Eddie grabbed the pole and shoved it onto Irving’s shoulder, hard. “I’m damned, don’t you get it?” he hissed. “It doesn’t matter how much I believe or what I’ve seen, I sold my soul, and I can never have the gift of faith.”

Irving looked at Mike.

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Me too, I think.”

Phineas Irving sighed heavily.

“It ain’t that bad,” Eddie urged him on. “Everything I said is true. We know you’ve got faith, and we know what you can do with the Nehushtan.”

“I choked when the tent fell off,” Irving reminded him. “And suddenly it stopped working, and we were almost eaten.”