Hope and Undead Elvis

chapter Thirty-Eight

Hope and the Last Bullet

"Keep your hands up where I can see them," said Duce.

Hope raised her hands. The Shepherds' pistol, tucked in her pocket, might as well have been in another state. "Easy, Duce," she called. "I don't want anybody to get hurt."

"It's a little late for that," said Duce. "How many people died in that little basement fire? How many are dead or dying on my Casino floor?"

"Just go," shouted Shades. "What's one more body now?"

"Shut up, you," said Duce. "You don't want to die any more than she wants to see you die."

"What's he talking about?" Josh had his hands up too, but his pistol was in a shoulder holster and would be easy to reach if he had a moment.

"Nothing," said Hope, but faster than she would have liked.

"So it looks like you're trying to take away three of the most important pieces of my world, young lady, and I don't appreciate that." Duce glared at her. Some of the people who'd escaped the Casino were starting to gather around and watch the proceedings. They seemed willing to observe, waiting to determine the outcome. Perhaps they understood what was at stake. Or perhaps they were only hoping to see blood.

"Your people are unhappy, Mr. Duce," said Hope. "Look how quick they were to turn on each other. A healthy society isn't that fragile."

"Things were going just fine before you showed up."

"Sure, so long as you were in power and had everyone eating at the company store, and slaves killing themselves so you could keep the machines running."

"Hope, stop trying to talk to him," called Shades. "You'll never get him to see reason."

"Listen to your father," said Duce. "Give up this idiotic escape attempt and come back inside. You're all going to die out there. Don't you want your baby to live in safety and comfort?"

"Wait, Shades is your father?" Josh almost lowered his hands but remembered to put them back up just in time. "I wondered why you wanted to bring someone like him."

"Stop it, Josh," said Margaret. "She can't help her lineage."

"So how about it, huh? You coming back to the fold or do I put a fresh hole in your father's head?" Duce shook the pistol a little for emphasis. "Somebody else can figure out how to get the power going again, but you can't get another father. You're going to go back to your room and have that baby, girl."

"People can't live this way," said Hope. "That's why the women aren't getting pregnant. It's why they're fighting each other. You haven't created a civilization, Duce, you've created a house of cards. One bad breeze and it's in ruins."

"Bad breeze, you say, and yet things were running just fine until you blew in here on that last storm."

"Then I'll leave."

"No, you won't. Nobody leaves. We can always use one more body down in the…" Duce stopped as something behind Hope drew his attention away. She thought about lowering a hand to dig out the Shepherds' pistol, but then she heard the noise that turned her blood to ice.

A fire truck's horn blared behind her.

She spun around, knowing it might get her or her father shot, but she had to see. She clutched the side of The Way to keep from overbalancing and watched as a damaged, blackened fire truck rolled into the parking lot on at least two flat tires. One of the lights still flashed blue and red, but the others were either burned out or smashed. The truck wove an erratic course across the lot, making for the Casino.

"What the hell is that?" muttered Josh.

Before Hope could answer, the truck clipped one of the few cars parked or abandoned in the lot. A great cloud of black birds rose up into the air, as if they'd been roosting by the car and the collision startled them. They swirled around the truck for a moment, an amoebic cloud of cells moving in tandem, before dispersing into the sky.

"No," whispered Hope. "They can't be here now."

"Who?" asked Josh.

But there weren't any people staggering along behind the fire truck. No fuel truck followed in its wake. Hope couldn't see anyone except a driver, whose head lolled from side to side with the same rhythm of the truck's weaving.

"Somebody stop that thing," shouted Duce from where he stood, still holding Shades with a gun against his head.

Nobody moved. It was as if they were all transfixed by the sight of the approaching truck.

Its front wheels bumped over the curb of the dividing island between the lot and the carport, but the idling engine couldn't pull the rest of the heavy truck over the obstruction. The engine stalled, leaving only the single rotating light as the only sign the vehicle had ever moved. It had grown so quiet around the Casino that Hope could hear the ticking as the truck's engine started to cool. When the driver's side door opened, everyone watching jumped.

The driver fell out into a heap on the ground. For a moment, Hope thought he had fallen dead where he lay, for he wasn't moving and didn't even seem to be breathing. He was naked, with his skin sporting a mixture of suppurating open wounds and charred, blackened flesh. Then he moved, working up to his hands and knees in a slow, laborious fashion. He left an extra human arm on the ground where he'd fallen, and Hope saw with horror that it had been gnawed upon. He was whispering something through his cracked and burnt lips.

One of the onlookers turned away and vomited. Hope couldn't blame him; the wreck of a man before her reeked of soot and sweat and overcooked pork. He had something pink clutched in his hand. At first, Hope was afraid it was a finger, but then he started flicking at it with his thumb and she realized it was a disposable cigarette lighter.

"Burn…" His voice was hoarse. "Burn the world." The lighter made sparks as he spun the wheel but no flame appeared at its tip. And still he flicked it. The clicking sound seemed to fill the whole world.

Or at least, what of it he hadn't yet burned.

The Shepherds' pistol appeared in Hope's hand with such fluid grace and speed that she had no memory of pulling it from her pocket. She pointed at the crawling man as he shambled toward a dry bush, still clicking his lighter.

"Drop that gun," shouted Duce. "That man is hurt, for God's sake!"

"He's not a man, he's a monster," cried Hope. "He'll burn you all down if you let him." Why just one? Where were all the others? Maybe he was the last of the Righteous Flame, having eaten all the others. There was no sign of the big fuel truck or any of the people staggering along behind it. Had they all burned themselves up in the name of their broken, twisted faith?

"Drop the gun, or I'm putting the first bullet in your daddy and the second one in you."

"You do and the next bullet goes in your head," called Margaret. She had her rifle up and trained on Duce.

The sadistic basement guard Chris appeared to one side of Duce with his own rifle up and pointed at Margaret. He was smudged from fighting the fire but a fierce pride burned in his eyes. "Want me to do the cripple, boss?"

Josh raised his own pistol at Chris. "Real nice, Chris."

"You don't have any ammo for that relic," said Chris. "You're bluffing."

"Actually, I've got one bullet," said Josh. "And that's enough to put a big hole in your day." He canted his head toward Hope without looking away from Chris. "I took one of yours. I'm sorry. It's an uncommon size."

"That's all right," said Hope. "What happens now?"

"I don't know."

The man with the lighter managed to start a fire, but not the dry bush. Somehow he managed to set his own hand on fire. He dropped the lighter and stared in unabashed fascination at the flames licking around his fingers. Onlookers shrieked in horror as the fire spread up his arm, as if he'd bathed in gasoline. His face contorted into a rictus of silent laughter as he burned, as if he'd at last found his true purpose.

Hope glanced back toward Duce and her father just as Shades elbowed Duce in the ribs and tried to twist away from the man's pistol. They both fell to the cement, wrestling over the gun.

Chris' rifle barked and Margaret slumped down, her rifle slipping to the ground. Josh's pistol fired and Chris pitched forward without a sound. Undead Elvis swept Hope down to the ground, covering her with his own body, as another weapon fired nearby.

Hope cried out in pain and fear as her baby shifted. Had she hurt him when she hit the ground? She didn't even care about her own potential injuries; just that her baby was all right.

"Margaret? Oh shit, Margaret!" Josh pulled open the car door and lifted the woman out. Hope saw a wound in her neck and a look of terror frozen upon the woman's face. Her blood had already soaked her blouse.

Shades lay on the ground in a spreading pool of blood. Two of the onlookers, galvanized into action at last, had hold of Duce. His pistol had been kicked away. "Elvis!" gasped Hope. "Let me up!"

A moment later, she was kneeling down beside her father and cradling his head in her lap. The bullet wound was in his belly, just below his sternum, and blood leaked from it with every heartbeat. "Daddy," she whispered.

"I'm sorry, Li'l lady." His voice was weak with pain. "I wanted to give you… the chance to leave." Tears streamed from behind his sunglasses, like those running unabated down Hope's cheeks to fall upon his face.

"No, you can't! Not now, not when I've just found you again!" Hope screamed. "Daddy, don't go!"

He reached up with a shaking hand to caress her wet cheeks. "I'll always be with you, Hope."

Anger surged through her and she raised her gun to point at Duce. The two men holding him jumped back. Duce froze. "I should kill you," said Hope. "Like you killed my daddy."

"You better kill me now," said Duce. "Or you're going to wish you had someday."

"God, Duce, don't you get it?" shouted Josh, still holding Margaret's lifeless body in his arms. "It doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to be King Turd of Shit Hill. People can work with you instead of for you. They will if you just give them a chance. You've started something here that could be great. A place of safety. Just stop treating it like your own goddamn little kingdom!"

A bubble of blood burst from between Shades' lips, but he managed to mumble loud enough for everyone to hear, "Normal life is… what we make it now. Make it… better than this."

Hope's anger died as quickly as it had arisen, as if her father's words had been water on a fire. She lowered her pistol. "He's right, Mr. Duce. We can't have the past back anymore. This is the new beginning. We can make it a place of death and fire, like that guy…" She nodded toward the fire truck's driver, now an unmoving lump of smoldering charcoal. "… Or a place of love and life. A place where we don't have to repeat the mistakes of the past."

She snapped open the cylinder of the Shepherds' pistol and shook out the last bullet. It clattered to the cement, the metallic clink echoing off the front of the Casino.

Duce didn't appear to be moved in the least. "So what do we do now?" he sneered. "Farm? Wear tie-dye and sing kumbayah?"

"Do whatever you want," said Josh. "But these people aren't going to follow you if you're not thinking about what's in their best interests. I know I wouldn't. And it starts by not killing people for your own comfort. Go make new mistakes. Learn from them. Build something to be proud of instead of something out of fear and jealousy."

Duce folded his arms. "Make me."

"There's a truck there right in front of you," said Josh. "Take it and go."

"Go?" asked Duce, as if the notion were incomprehensible.

"Go," called someone else. "Leave us. We don't want you here."

"You're not welcome here anymore," said another man, whom Hope recognized as the first one to meet her when she'd arrived. "Go away. We'll do better without you."

Without another word, Duce climbed into the cab of the fire truck. Weapons were pointed at him as he struggled with the transmission, grinding through the gears until he found one that caught. "There will be other groups," he called over the thrum of the engine. "And they'll need someone to organize them. You better hope I don't find them out there in the wilderness."

The fire truck bumped over the curb and Duce steered it toward the Casino lot's exit.

"Should we go after him?" someone asked.

"No," said the man who'd greeted Hope. "We've got a lot of work to do here, and can't spare anyone to chase that a*shole."

Hope looked up at Undead Elvis. "Can you do anything to help my father? He's dying, Elvis."

"I can take him with me, Li'l lady. It will ease his passing. But if I go with him, I can't go with you."

Hope bowed her head. Somehow, she'd known this choice was always going to be hers to make in the end. Her baby moved in her belly, unhappy at how he was being crushed against Hope's dying father. "How will I know the right way to Graceland?"

Undead Elvis gave her his best half-smile. "You'll know, Li'l lady. You've always known."

Hope swallowed a lump in her throat. "Will I ever see you again?"

"Ever is a long time." Undead Elvis hunkered down next to Hope to regard Shades.

Shades coughed. "Nice… sunglasses. They fit you."

"Sir, my name's Elvis, and I'd be honored if you'd walk with me."

Hope watched as wonderment mixed with the pain on her father's face, transforming it into an expression of peacefulness. "Are you… the father?"

"No, sir, I'm not. I've just been accompanying your daughter, and a fine young woman she is. Come, let me tell you about her." Undead Elvis helped Shades to stand. He wobbled from the wound in his torso and blood ran from it to soak his jeans. And yet, he seemed to draw strength from the singer's presence. He let Undead Elvis put an arm around his waist to help support him.

Shades looked down at Hope. She could see herself reflected in his sunglasses as well as those on Undead Elvis. Her reflection looked so sad that she wished she could reach out to give herself a comforting hug. "I love you, Li'l lady. You'll be a wonderful mother."

"I l-love you too, Daddy. And you too, Elvis. I'll miss you."

Undead Elvis smiled at her, his teeth sparkling in his bluish complexion. "Just because we're not right beside you doesn't mean we won't be with you, Li'l lady." He gave her his best Army salute.

Josh helped Hope to her feet. He still had Margaret's blood on his hands, but Hope didn't care. She needed the physical contact and closeness more than anything. They watched as Shades and Undead Elvis walked slowly off into the snow-covered fields.

They left no footprints.