Bad Men (30 page)

Yeah. "Yeah."

Muttered: "Didn't think I was getting through there."

Jesus paused, then said, in his head, "Not sure you are."

"Fuck, that was almost a conversation. Go on. You can do it."

"What?"

"What you're fucking doing."

And the room tipped upside down.

Jolt of pain. Intense. On the floor, though. Bolt of fire down his hip and along his ribcage. Heat, heat, heat. He couldn't see Pearce any longer, but he could certainly hear him, willing him on, telling him he could do it. Or was it the wasp?

No more birdsong, which was a relief.

So what was he doing down here on the floor? No leather straps to chew. Did he have to catch the birds and see if he could speak Greek? Was that it?

Just lying on his back, staring at the pretty lights. In pain. Staring at the

Chan

del

ier

above the bench.

Spectacular. Thing of beauty. Could get lost in it forever. Forget about the pain. Lose himself. Startling textures. It had remained intact. Cross toppled, missed. Higher up than it looked. He let his mind fall into the damn thing, let it swallow him up and not let go. Yep. He was sinking, falling deeper into the shimmer. Inside it, and there was another chandelier, and he sank into it, too. And then he pulled himself out with a jerk, like a man who's almost nodded off to sleep at the wheel. But he was one chandelier short, so he jerked himself out of that one too.

Afraid, now, that if he fell into it, he'd never get out. Sink deeper and deeper and the surface would be a distant memory of something no longer obtainable. And the chandelier, absorbing. A story the wasp wanted to read to him.
The Enchanted Chandelier
.

He closed his eyes to avoid looking at the light. Heard the wasp's rasping voice. He'd been quiet for a while, but he was back, telling Jesus a story.

Once upon a time there was a young boy called Brian.

He smiled. So long since anyone had used his first name.

And Brian was a bad boy.

No! Never!

And he was taken into the dungeon by a bad man called Wallace.

The wasp had to shout to be heard over Jesus's screams. But he managed, powerful pair of lungs on him.

Wallace didn't like bad boys. In fact, Wallace used to take all the bad young boys of the village down into his dungeon and strap them to benches and leave them there to rot in their own stink.

Like Pearce. Not like Jesus. Jesus had a cage. What about that, Mr Wasp, think you're so smart?

Sometimes he'd come down and talk to them. Sometimes he'd give them tea to drink. But the tea was poisoned and made them see things that weren't there.

Sometimes the boys would think there was a giant wasp in the dungeon with them, but that was the poison playing tricks on their senses.

And sometimes the boys would hear screaming and yelling and when they asked who was there, Jesus would reply and tell them he was helping them escape, but he was nailed to a cross so it was a slow, painful process and they'd have to bear with him.

"Thanks," Jesus said. "I think that's enough of that story."

The wasp hovered, silent, then flew away, zigzagging out of sight. No voice in Jesus's head now, but lights flashed bounced spun around inside his skull, vivid colours dancing and words swelling into cushioned shapes that softly kissed the surface of his brain.

He was getting lost again and he heard someone shout.

Jesus screamed again and the word, ‘Jesus', appeared in his head, yellow, the fat ‘J' tinged orange at its base. It was a beautiful thing to behold. "Come, ye, and see the word ‘Jesus' in all its glory."

Other words popped into his head: ‘shark', ‘custard', ‘Heathrow'. ‘Custard' was a good-looking word. The other two were thin, stark, cold, blue. Like Wallace's eyes.

"Jesus."

It was the wasp again. The fuck did he want?

"The nail gun."

The fucking nail gun. Nail gun. Big fat stripy waspy nail gun. He raised his head. In the corner, there it was, was it? Was that a nail gun?

But he couldn't get over there. He'd have to crawl. Drag this cross with him.

No fucking chance.

Somebody started screaming and after a while the screaming got to be rhythmic and it didn't sound like screaming any longer.

He was a nice guy. Look, he was going to all this effort for Pearce, wasn't he? Fucking hurt.

Or was he doing it for the wasp? Where was the fat, ugly, stingy thing? Couldn't see it any more.

Fuck the screaming. It was making the nails vibrate, which made his palms tingle, which made his feet tingle, which made his forearms tingle, which made his shins tingle, which was something.

He tired to move.

A screech.

More pain.

A gentle sobbing, panting, and a groan.

He closed his eyes. Saw the chandelier in his head, swimming, like it was made of liquid. Above it, the grains in the ceiling wriggled. Opened his eyes. Turned his head. Saw the floor, slivers of worms.

Caught his breath on the edge of his larynx.

What was he doing? Where was he? Who was he? What was all this pain?

"Nail gun," the wasp said.

Flash stared out
the window, cars blurring past on one side, the odd pedestrian on the other, nobody giving anybody a glance, nobody caring what anybody else was up to, nobody caring what happened to anybody else, nobody caring what became of May, nobody, but, yeah, Rodge would care if he knew, and Dad, sure, yeah, God, if May died and that, Godfuckingdamnit, that wasn't unlikely, you know, Rodge would be fucked and it would end Dad and —

Fuck. The baby. May might survive, but there was no way the baby was going to.

If May lost the baby it'd definitely end Dad.

Gotta speak to him. Tell him.

Flash groped for his phone. Dialled. No reply.

Which didn't seem right. Dad ought to be there, and when he was on the phone earlier he'd sounded out of breath, and Flash remembered him having chest pains before.

Flash had to make a detour. "Sorry, May," he muttered, swinging a left. Wallace would have to wait.

Getting hard to
see. Wallace kept blinking but his vision stayed blurry. The neck wound wasn't getting any better. He hated to use the word, but, well, it was gushing. Like someone was pouring warm water down his Adam's apple. Wasn't so good. And, yeah, he did feel a bit woozy.

Wasn't just his collar that was soaked. Shirt front was drenched. Definitely have to change it now.

Tried to press his foot down but it wouldn't respond. Like his hand on the wheel. Not moving. Just sitting there clutching the grip, not turning, not doing what he was telling it to. His foot felt light. Feather light. Little feathers at the ends of his legs. Feathers at the ends of his arms.

Fuck. He was hard. Prison hard. Anybody called him a pussy, he'd show them. Beaten by a wee girl? By his fucking wife?

Fuck was he on about feathers for?

Jesus fucking Christ.

No way he was going to make it home in this state. There was only one thing for it.

He slammed both his feet down. This time they responded. The car came to a halt.

He took a breath and turned the car round, headed back to the churchyard. If he was quick enough, he'd still catch her before the ambulance whisked her away.

He'd die dirty. So be it.

All Jesus wanted
to do was close his eyes and drift away on the waves of pure tangerine that were coursing through his veins. He was in too much pain to be caring about anything any more, no matter what he was being told. The wasp wanted him to fetch something, but the wasp could go fuck itself. He hurt all over. Really badly. His hip was fucked up. And it felt like his palms were about to slide right through the nails. Thought for a minute that the right one had and that his arm was hanging loose and free. Tried to wave to the guy on the bench. And pain flooded through his hand anew.

Turned his head to the side. Very nice. As he thought. His right hand was pushed forward, the nail head disappearing somewhere within intricate folds of flesh in his palm. His hand was halfway out.

The throbbing pain was excruciating.

A lucid thought. Zapped into his head by the wasp. You're going to die in a psychedelic haze if you don't get on with it.

With what?

Get to the fucking nail gun.

Imagined he was halfway there and he hadn't even tried. Just the constant weight of him, hanging. The thrusting forward, the rocking, the dragging of the fucking thing on his back across the floor. Somehow.

A good hard tug. Was that all it would take? If only he could get some traction.

He closed his eyes, saw fireworks, opened them again. Still saw fireworks.

I'm not crazy I'm not crazy I'm not crazy.

But he probably was. Couldn't be here, could he? Not possible. The cage against the far wall, that guy whose name he couldn't remember up there on his bench, the cross. All these fucking egg cartons glued to the wall. A giant wasp.

Nah, but he knew what was going on. He knew he was Jesus, knew he'd been crucified. Not much doubt about it.

And he hadn't been able to think straight for a long time, but he was thinking straight now and what he was thinking was that if he was Jesus he could perform miracles, right? Just cause his hand had a nail driven through it didn't mean it could stop him. Not God's son. He could pull his hand out of that. Easy.

His breath was shallow and he really wished he could wipe off the sweat that was dripping down his forehead.

So he'd do that, then. Pull his hand out of the cross.

Psyche himself up. Get ready for it.

And go.

Tug.

It hurt. It shouldn't have.

Aaargh
. He was Jesus. He could do this.

If he really fucking tugged.

Fucking fuck fuck.

It burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned like a

F U C K E R

No ripping sound. But his hand came free. He stared at it, a hole through the centre, and started to cry.

Flash pulled into
the side of the road. He needed to take a minute to calm himself.

Naturally he was worried about May, and even more worried about her baby, but the more he thought about it, the more scared he became of what he might find at home. He went over what his dad had said last they spoke. About Norrie. About him being shot and Dad not caring. About Norrie shooting Rodge. Flash still couldn't believe it, even though May had said so, too. It wasn't right. Nothing about this was right and Dad wasn't answering the phone. He might have gone out, but Flash didn't think so.

Not like he had a mobile.

But maybe he'd called an ambulance for Norrie. Maybe that's all it was, and he'd gone off with him.

Norrie was his fucking friend.

Well, Flash would find out the truth soon enough cause he wasn't far away from Dad's now.

He pulled back out into the traffic.

Jesus was sobbing
his heart out and saying, "Look," but Pearce couldn't see anything, couldn't get his head high enough.

Pearce was fed up of saying, "What? What am I supposed to see?" He felt like crying himself. His physical state didn't help, either. Lying here for so long, it had begun to feel as if he was packed in sand. His limbs were so heavy from lack of use that the very air around them seemed to press down on them. The various straps across him were weighty as lead. But inside, he was lighter than air.