Empire of Dust (3 page)

She was right. It didn't take him long to turn the dreary light of his antagonism onto Damon once again. Ezekiel berated him for coming alone, and for not having the strength of will to persuade others to come with him.

Damon didn't take the bait, either. He agreed he was not a proselytizer. "There were a few," Damon said, "who liked what they heard, but they just didn't believe enough. But your people, now, they've got a strong faith and commitment. It would be an honor to lead people like this. They'd probably lead themselves, given a direction." He smiled at Rodney and Charlotte, but only Rodney smiled back, a crooked, lopsided grin.

"And what about that little girlfriend of yours?" Ezekiel said. "I still think she was the one who made the decision to split, wasn't she? All she needed was the chance." Ezekiel's laugh cut into Damon's gut like a rusty knife.

He bit back what he wanted to say. "I'm just glad that
I
can be here. I'm just glad that I can serve you—and
him
."

Ezekiel laughed again. "Okay, okay . . . you're a good boy, Demon. Maybe we can get
some
use out of you. . . ."

So the day went on, punctuated by Ezekiel's mockery that made Damon appear reasonable and slow to anger, and roused Rodney's sympathy toward him. A few gibes made the big biker actually shake his head and look out the window, as if embarrassed by Ezekiel's sadism towards so sincere a follower.

Jezebel, Charlotte, and Chang and Eng seemed to take Ezekiel's attacks in stride. They had probably heard and received worse from Ezekiel themselves.

The vehicles frequently stopped when other routes crossed Route 40. Ezekiel told everyone to shut up for a minute and sat stiffly for anywhere from five to thirty seconds. Then he nodded and pointed straight ahead, and Jezebel drove on.

Just after 1 o'clock, they stopped on the outskirts of Flagstaff for food and supplies, and Damon made certain that most of the party saw how generous he was, chipping in fifty dollars of the eighty-dollar total, and how he carried more than anyone else when they loaded the vans. It didn't keep Ezekiel from ragging on him once they were driving again.

But it was all right. The fat man would stop singing soon enough.

T
hey stopped for the evening north of Joseph City, driving a few miles up a rutted dirt road, then turning onto what looked like a cattle path. It wasn't a road so much as bare scrub.

"There it is," Rodney said, and up ahead Damon saw a low adobe building forty feet long. If it ever had any windows, they were gone now, leaving square openings in its front wall. There was an open doorway at each end.

"Old cowboy bunkhouse," Rodney explained for Damon's benefit. "When I was ridin', we used to come out here and party."

"Enough history, Rodney," Ezekiel said. "I just hope the place has running water and ice machines."

Rodney, confused, thought for a moment. "Hell, no."

"I know, Rodney. I was joking. It will be sheer delight to live as the cowboys and the Hell's Angels did."

"I wasn't an Angel, Ezekiel," Rodney said. "I was a Pagan."

Ezekiel snorted as he opened his door. "I don't distinguish between turds by their shapes or shades of brown, Rodney."

Rodney got out of the van frowning. It was certainly not the first time Ezekiel had insulted his former colors, but if Rodney was like the few bikers Damon had known, the slur would not sit well, no matter how long ago Rodney had left his club.

The bunkhouse was a mess. The legs of half a dozen rusted metal cot frames were nearly covered with the years of sand and dust that had blown in through the open doors and windows. "Well," Ezekiel said, "this is really nice, Rodney. I'm glad you remembered this place. Gonna be another tent night, friends. Unless you care to sleep in the old bunkhouse here, Rodney."

Rodney scowled and nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"Stubborn, stubborn," Ezekiel muttered, then suddenly looked up. The stupid meanness vanished from his face, and was replaced by a look of transfiguration.

The air had been still, but now the wind stirred, making small whirlwinds of sand near Ezekiel Swain, and in that moment, Damon saw why the others followed this fat, repulsive man. He had become a prophet, a seer, one who hears the voice that others cannot, who is touched by the Divine.

Then the wind stopped and there was nothing in the air but heat. Ezekiel's face sagged into its usual rolls of flesh, and he smiled. In that smile Damon read not a joy of sharing, but a satisfied possession, the dog in the manger that has his own while the other mutts starve.

"Now, that was primo," Damon said, then shook himself in a way that was probably meant to imply an orgasmic shudder. "Okay, let's get camp set up. God, I'm starving."

After dinner, Ezekiel said that he wanted everyone in their tents soon after dark. When Damon looked at Rodney quizzically, the man said, "He's goin' out—into the desert to talk to the Divine. He needs it quiet. You know, he's out there, he hears somebody back here yellin' or somethin', it throws him off. It's hard work, I guess, communicating, I mean."

This was it, then. It would be tonight. The chance to kill Ezekiel Swain had come more quickly than Damon had expected. He had thought it over long and hard all day. He had loathed Swain from the start. What he practiced was bullying, not leadership, and he had made it all too clear that Damon, the new guy, was going to be his favorite target.

But what had really nailed the lid onto Ezekiel Swain's coffin was what had made Salieri hate Mozart, Rufus Griswold hate Poe, Judas hate Jesus. It was the thought of
Why him? Why is this fat, mean asshole visited by gods, while I, who am so much more deserving, have never even been an afterthought?

But I will be heard. For this time, fate has given me the means. Jezebel.

It didn't matter if Damon didn't have the power to hear the Divine. Jezebel did, and Damon could control her. She was already insecure enough to let her pig of a brother push her around, and probably have sex with her, too.

The thought made Damon shiver, then smile. If she was that desperate, he could run her easily. And when he controlled her, he could handle the others, too. Hell, he could tell that Rodney was so sick of Ezekiel that he'd probably be willing to become anyone else's boy so long as he could get him to the Divine. They all followed Ezekiel like dumb dogs, and when dumb dogs lost one master, they got used to another one quick enough.

Sure, Jezebel had the link, so she could be queen if she wanted to be, but Damon was going to be the power behind the throne. And when they finally found the Divine, that power would be nothing compared to what the Divine would give him. Maybe finding him would take a little longer, since Jezebel's connection wasn't as strong as Fat Boy's, but Damon would rather find him in two weeks with himself as boss than in two days with Ezekiel Swain running the show. So Ezekiel would disappear into the desert night.

From his tent, Damon watched the others retire as Ezekiel walked away from the road in the direction of a mesa. It was hard for Damon to estimate distances here, but he guessed that Ezekiel would never reach it. With his weight, he'd be panting from exhaustion after a hundred yards.

Finally the last flashlight was turned off, and the only sound was that of the wind, which was picking up force every minute. Damon stuck his head out of his tent and looked in the direction Ezekiel had walked.

A gibbous moon lit the tents and the vans, but Damon could no longer see Ezekiel Swain. When he looked across the desert, he saw only the motion of the sands being lifted and tossed by the winds. No one moved around the tents, and he heard no voices, so he crawled out and crept on hands and knees to where he could not be seen. Then he stood up.

The earth was soft, so he could walk with hardly a sound. He patted the folding Buck knife and the small, thin Maglite in his pockets, then moved carefully and quietly toward where Ezekiel Swain had disappeared into the night.

Damon had been wrong about Ezekiel's stamina. It took a long time for the younger man to catch up with him at what Damon had thought was a large mesa, but proved to be only a small flattop just two miles from the camp. The soil was more sandy here, and the wind quickly erased his footprints.

Damon moved more slowly now, watching the fat man outlined against the sky on top of the little mesa. Ezekiel's back was to Damon, and he was looking up toward the moon, so Damon knew the only way he could be seen was if Ezekiel turned and looked down at him. Even then, his eyes would be blinded by the moon.

Damon figured the best way to do it was just to do it. The ground would soak up any blood like a blotter, and it would be easy to bury the man in the soft sand. He could use his hands to dig. So he crept up the side of the flattop, careful not to dislodge any of the loose rocks that peppered his way.

He was ten yards below Ezekiel when he heard, over the roar of the wind, the man's words. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I will . . . no, nothing, Lord. I will let nothing keep me from You, I swear to You. Just keep Your voice strong. I will come. Now . . . show me, please, Lord. Please show me what I want to see. . . ."

Damon felt a chill run through him. Ezekiel Swain seemed like a sorcerer, calling up gods and devils, casting spells on that mini-mountaintop. But there was nothing Damon could see other than blowing sands, nor anything he heard besides whistling wind. He crept closer.

Ezekiel seemed to be in a trance, standing with legs slightly spread, arms out and partially raised, as though presenting himself to whatever was speaking to him. Damon, now ten feet from Ezekiel, felt in his pocket for the knife.

It was a nasty piece of work, with a tapered four-inch blade and a solid wood-and-brass handle. Damon took it out and opened the lock-back blade, which made a soft but heavy click, clearly audible over the wind's howl. He could see Ezekiel's shoulders tense, his head come down slightly, as though ducking a bullet, and then the man looked over his shoulder at Damon.

The moonlight made the pig eyes glitter before they vanished into shadow, and Damon knew that in that second Ezekiel saw the spray of moonlight on the brushed steel blade. The fat man drew in a breath as if to speak or shout, but words wouldn't save him.

Damon closed the gap between them so quickly that Ezekiel was barely able to throw up a hand to stop him. It didn't do any good. Damon came down over his out-thrust arm with a right hook, burying the blade to the hilt in the folds of the fat neck, then pushing the knife back and out, ripping the jugular and several layers of thick fat like butter.

Damon jumped back quickly before the blood started to jet, and watched as Ezekiel stood, his face filled with shock, eyes as wide as the fleshy pouches around them would allow. He clapped a hand to his neck, but his heart continued to pump the blood through his pudgy fingers. It was black in the moonlight.

The dying man seemed to stand there forever, looking at Damon. So he stepped in again, punching the knife hard into the flabby softness under Ezekiel's breastbone, and tore downward. It was like ripping open a sack of hot manure. Thick, greasy wetness flowed over his hand. Damon staggered back, knelt, and savagely thrust his hand into the soft sand, as if ridding his skin of a painful acid.

Still Ezekiel would not fall. He stood, life leaking out above and below, emptying as Damon watched and thought, as if in a nightmare, that the juices coming out of Ezekiel Swain, his blood and bile and yellow fat, were mingling together in a stream that would creep around him and drown him.

"Go down, damn you!" Damon said through the nausea that choked him, and he pushed Ezekiel Swain with all his strength, so that Swain finally toppled. But now Damon could see his face in the moonlight, and it was even more terrible than his leaking body.

Ezekiel's eyes were glaring at Damon with the ferocity of the justly damned, and the nostrils of his bulbous nose were a second pair of flat black eyes beneath the true and burning ones. The wide mouth, made even larger by the blood that outlined the lips, was twisted in a snarl. It tried to form words, but only air wheezed from it. Blood still pumped from the slashed neck.

"Die, Fat Boy," Damon said, hating how his voice shook.

Then Ezekiel Swain's mouth stopped working, the blood slowed to a trickle, and the head lolled to the side. But as it moved, Ezekiel's gaze remained fixed on Damon, like a portrait in which the eyes follow you about, accusing even in death.

The blood and bile continued to dribble from the holes Damon had made. It was as if Ezekiel had been filled with juice that would ooze out of him indefinitely. If he waited for it to stop, Damon thought he might be there for days. So he looked around for a place to bury the man.