There wasn’t a plan.
Men and women with guns. They pointed at flames, and some of them sobbed on dashboards or into open palms. Radio static was punctuated with screams and gunfire. They paced back and forth, wringing their hands, comforting one another, cursing and spitting, checking to see if their weapons were loaded, wiping sweat from their eyes, exchanging stories, or staring at the ruinous war around them. The EBS system’s wailing subsided, leaving the flashing lights atop the cars and ambulances to a dreadful silence that allowed fear to thrive, to breathe, to step out of the shadows and present itself as the beast which feasted upon the hearts of martyrs and saints alike.
He turned away from the officer and stepped into an ambulance to see if there was something he could do for one of the wounded. No matter how much panic he heard outside of the barricade, how much chaos, how much agony, he accepted it all as a matter of course. He grew up in the sweaty gutters of a wounded town outside of Ciudad Juarez, where he would find sanctuary in fists and blood. He knew the tortured screams of junkies suffering from withdrawal and the cries of lonely women who were at the mercy of bejeweled pimps.
Inside the ambulance, a woman wearing a salmon-colored shirt and a pair of white jeans sat beside a dead body. With short blonde hair and green eyes, she didn’t seem surprised at the priest’s sudden appearance.
“They shot this man more than a dozen times, and he kept coming,” she said.
He sat beside her and looked at the dead man. A bullet hole had punctured the forehead and blood crusted beneath the shuttered eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
The muscles along her jawline clenched. “I’ve seen gurneys trail blood through the hospital. I’ve delivered babies from dead women. What if you found out you couldn’t help?” her eyes lingered on him while she awaited his answer.
“I’m not sure I understand the question. I’m Father Joe, by the way.”
“Kathy,” she said. “What if you found out your prayers weren’t worth a damn?”
Here was a woman used to a schedule, to a carefully ordered, predictable routine, and her life had been interrupted. Of course she was pissed off, and she would take it out on the priest, but he was used to it.
“I do what I have the power to do,” he said. “If it’s not good enough, then I can’t say it was useless, or a waste of my time, because how would I know otherwise? You tried to help this man…”
Her eyes were disconnected, staring at a moment that was scattered among her thoughts. “Yeah. You could say that. On my way home from work. I work in Mount Clemens at the hospital. This man was on the street. He was dead, Father. I checked his pulse. Dead people were all over the street. My phone started ringing because they wanted me to come back to work. But this man opened his eyes and grabbed my hair. Pulled on it, but I don’t fuck around. I carry a piece. My father taught me how to shoot, and I just want to find him, get to him to make sure he’s okay. My mother, too.
“This man grabbed me and I shot him. Point blank in the chest. He didn’t so much as flinch. Right across the street. It was a few minutes ago but it doesn’t seem like it. A cop shot him. A couple cops shot him until he took one to the head and flopped.”
She looked at the corpse as if seeing it for the first time.
“You’re not going back to work,” Father noted.
Kathy laughed. “Work? You’re a funny guy, Father. You got yourself a sense of humor. Yeah. Funny.”
Sam Ninkovich. Kathy. Frank. All the brave officers outside. Thousands of people—he didn’t have the power to help everyone. He would help whomever he could, however he could.
But there was Frank, who thought he was never coming back. A promise had been made and he would keep it. What kind of man was he if he couldn’t keep his promise?
He used to promise himself that he would become a champion in the boxing ring. His promise launched itself through a powerful fist that shattered a man’s consciousness and killed him outright on a sunny day in April.
The man at ringside, the heckler, had looked just like Frank.
You become a bandit or a priest,
Father Joe’s old man used to say to him, a line from a Western that played over and over again on Mexican TV.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
“When you have to shoot… Shoot, don’t talk,” Father mumbled a line from the film.
“What?” Kathy asked.
“Praying,” he said.
“I need to get home,” she said. “My parents need me. I take care of them. They’re old and they need me. I can’t stay here, but I don’t want to go back out there. This is safe, comfortable.”
He clasped both of his dark, rough hands over one of hers. “You’re a good daughter. You’ll see them again very soon, I promise.”
“Isn’t there some bullshit in the Bible about the dead coming back to life when the world’s about to end?”
Father sighed. “Sure. And they’ve all got Coronas and cigarettes, so we’ll be throwing an end-of-the-world party. I’d rather watch pro wrestling than connecting this crap to some prophecy. Let the priests do that.”
She gave him an “are you serious” look and her mouth opened to speak, but gunfire in close proximity drew their attention away from the conversation.
Something terrible was sinking into the depths of his soul, as if lead were being poured into his belly. His feet were blocks of cement, and the same mortal fear that enslaved the free will of both Ninkovich and Kathy kept him from venturing back into the night. He closed his eyes and tried to picture lines from the Book of Revelation to find an answer, an archaic prophesy that might save the souls of the innocent, but he was powerless. His gut instinct was to find a way to solve the problem, but he was like any other priest who served beside an army during a war: lives would be lost, and he would stand witness.
In the heat and sorrow of Mexico, he never ran from a fight. Becoming a priest didn’t change him much.
Outside, people climbed over the tops of cars while police-issue revolvers and pump-action shotguns fired into the clambering mess of shadows without pause. Nobody was trying to make arrests or bring anyone in for questioning. Color drained from the world and was replaced by gun smoke; featureless bodies wrestled other bodies to the cement.
The flashing lights returned to focus and Father Joe looked for the first person he could help. These honorable men and women were at the mercy of an uncontrolled mob, the likes of which didn’t fear the threat of death. The mob was a serpent that slithered over humanity and poisoned the air with its fetid stench.
He stepped between two people who locked arms against the passenger door of a squad car. After wrenching the attacker away, blood squirted over Father’s hands, as the victim dropped into his grasp. He dragged the police officer backward, and he found it odd that he could note the shine on the man’s shoes. Where could he take him? The man held his face and screamed into his hands, and Father did the only thing he could do, his mind unclear, thoughts thrown to the wind by the storm of violence.
The Act of Contrition tumbled from his lips.
Warm liquid gushed over his fingers; the officer’s ankle was seized by a hand, and Father could see the attacker for what it really was, or might be. The world was silenced by his moment of awe: vacant eyes inset into a thin skull, a shirtless Caucasian with mottled flesh scarred by disuse, ribs stretching against flesh, gray sweat pants hanging from the thin waist of a man who might’ve declared himself dead years ago. Whatever thirst for vengeance against mankind possessed him, Father couldn’t identify it.
The thin man yanked on the officer’s leg. Father wasn’t about to play tug of war; he gazed into those blank eyes and said, “Help these people, damn you!”
The man didn’t reply. There was no hint of recognition that words had been directed at him; he bent down and grabbed the screaming officer’s leg.
Father glanced around at the other aggressive shapes. Officers were fleeing the scene, running into the comfort of the abyssal-dark suburbs.
His hands were sticky with blood.
Father Joe was calm, just like he used to be whenever he entered the boxing ring.
The thin man ignored Father. He was casually sitting on the concrete with his hands wrapped around the powerless officer’s ankle. The policeman kicked and attempted to push himself away, dropping his hands from a syrupy face that shone like a sea filled with oil revealed in the glow of a firestorm.
Old habits die hard. Demons scratched at Father’s innards and clawed their way through his throat. A roar pushed out of his mouth and his fists clenched. He swung hard at the thin man’s face without asking another question, without begging for mercy in the name of Heaven or Christ. The man’s head rocked sideways and he fell on his shoulder. He looked like a wounded alien from a bad science fiction movie in which all the costumes had been purchased at the local Halloween specialty store.
The thin man was nearly turned over onto his
stomach—the
savage lust which manifested itself through a fist and a battle cry dissipated into air from the priest’s frozen lungs. His heartbeat faded into irrelevance as he looked into the open backside from which kidneys and intestines had been ripped, leaving a gaping hole as if a malevolent puppet master had designed the body.
The man was peeling himself off the concrete from a blow that would’ve knocked out a rhinoceros. Sure, a long time had passed since
Sangriento Joe
stepped into the ring, but this guy didn’t seem to feel it.
Kathy had told him a dead man attacked her, was shot, and kept coming.
A warm spotlight lingered on him, and he was aware of the helicopter hovering in the sky above.
The wounded officer on the ground behind him screamed anew. Father snapped his head around to two more people crouching near the officer’s arms. The officer’s wrists were sandwiched between two sets of teeth and flesh was peeled from bone like fresh lasagna forked into a hungry mouth, saucy blood leaking over the officer’s navy blue sleeves.
“Father!”
Ninkovich pointed his revolver at the new attackers and fired shots into their heads. He lowered his gun and fired into the wounded officer’s head, too. There was no hesitation, as if the choice had already been made for him.
“Run while you still can,” Ninkovich said.
Father wanted to debate with him, to condemn him for murdering a man for the sake of “mercy” until God was ready, but Father wasn’t sure he had an argument to offer.
He grabbed the officer by his shoulders. “Come with me. Get as many men as you can and help me…”
“It’s too late,” Ninkovich said, the strength in his body having fled; Father felt like he could shake the man until his soul jarred itself free.
“IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD, COCKSUCKERS!”
Father and Ninkovich both turned to see a man standing atop the roof of a cruiser with a heavy, double-bladed battle-axe in a gauntleted fist. With wild black hair and a dark beard extending to his chest, the newcomer wore full plate armor, reflecting the glow of flames while streaks of blood were splattered on the surface like an infant’s attempt at coloring in a book with crayons.
The man jumped down onto the concrete, barely able to keep his balance while he stood upright.
Father dragged Ninkovich away. “Come with me—”
Smoking tires screamed against the pavement as a truck slammed into the barricade. The driver-side door opened and a middle-aged man with a baseball cap on his head stumbled out of the cab. A pale police officer missing half a face and most of a thigh leaned against a cop car, smearing blood along the vehicle.
A boy jumped out of the truck with a hunting rifle in his hand. He tried to help the driver to his feet, but he stopped and looked up at the man who was supposed to be dead.
Father forgot everything. There was nothing to remember, nothing worth thinking. He leapt over a crawling body while bullets continued to fly over his head. He pushed someone else aside—he was remotely aware of something wet and sticky on his fingers. It was like being in the ring all over again; drown out the noise of the crowd and focus. The sound of the bell, the crunch of bone, the referee’s voice—he was deaf to everything else.
He scooped the boy into his arms and turned around as two screams pierced his ears on either side of him; a woman inside the truck was being dragged out of the passenger door, and Father grabbed for her ankle while the boy cried out for his mother.
Blood squirted along the dashboard and soaked into tufts of blonde hair that whipped about as the woman struggled.
Father turned around and found the maimed policeman, who barely had a face or a leg, wrestling with the truck driver.
He held the boy in his arms. People were being murdered all around him. Blood washed over his black shoes, and the helicopter fled.
This is what Hell must sound like.
It was Father’s turn to die. Another police officer, an African American woman, stared at him as if trying to figure out if he was an alien or human. The flesh in the middle of her face had been ripped away. Her lips, nose, and forehead were gone, leaving a red-stained skull set between flesh on either side as if her head was attempting to burst out of a shell.