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New Hampton: the Snake-Handlers’ Commune
This has been an unsettling experience all around, the Angel thought. She’d felt odd ever since getting out of the hippie’s van, but had turned away the strangeness with vast quantities of the snake-handlers’ unbelievably excellent food. She felt better after eating, but now she realized that she should have resisted Creighton’s notion to attend the ophiolatrists’ services. She wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with what went on in their places of worship. He mother had taken her along when she’d attended several such churches during her quest for spiritual enlightenment. They had also frightened her. The loud music. The crazed testifying. Tonight, for some reason, she felt herself terribly susceptible to their call.
She prayed to the Lord for strength to remain calm. But for some reason he chose to deny her prayer. Part of her watched in horror as some strange spirit rose up in her and she heard herself confessing her sins, her wanton desires, fortunately speaking in no language of Earth. Which, when she thought about it, frightened her even more.
Then she heard the Voice.
The Angel was terrified at the sound of it in her head. She had never really experienced anything like that before. Clearly, she was in the grip of the Holy Spirit and it frightened her. She knew that she was not worthy.
“John Fortune is at Kaleita’s Groceries—he’s being taken by a group of armed men. Someone has to rescue him! Someone out there who can hear this—please! Help!”
The voice of the Holy Ghost was deep and masculine. It spoke to her alone. At least no one else acted as if they heard it. It spoke with great urgency, telling her that the boy was in danger, telling her that she had to reach him, fast. It was clear that if she didn’t he’d fall into the hands of their enemies and The Hand’s plans would come to nothing. The Millennium would be denied and Jesus Christ would not take his place as God’s Regent upon the Earth. It was up to her and her alone, unworthy as she was, to rescue him.
She ran almost blindly from the church. The man called Creighton—useless as he’d been throughout this entire affair—stood in her way. She removed him. She had no time to find the door. She went through the wall.
As she ran down the hill the Spirit Tree cheered her on, the bottles tied to its branches clanking musically in the wind. She remembered the store on the county road, about two miles from where she stood. It would take her about seven or eight minutes to get there on foot, maybe less if she ignored the roads and cut cross country.
Too long, she thought. Too, too long. The boy’s kidnappers would be gone by then and the Holy Ghost’s warning would have been wasted.
Then she remembered the van sitting before the ramshackle barn and hope sprang into her breast. If only, she prayed. If only...
She ran to it, flung open the driver’s side door so hard that it rebounded and slammed against her backside as she leaned into the cab. Praise the Lord, she silently prayed. The idiot left his keys in the ignition.
She vaulted into the seat and turned the key, gunning the gas pedal. The engine groaned like a feeble old man with a hangover. Gently, she told herself. Be gentle and patient. For once... take your time...
She eased up on the gas and the engine sputtered to life. She engaged the clutch and winced as it sounded like she ground a few pounds of the transmission into metal filings. The van bucked and humped like an unruly mustang, but slipped into gear. The Angel shot backwards, scattering the chickens who’d been peacefully pecking their day’s ration of feed, ground another month’s worth of life out of the transmission, finally found first and headed on down the road.
It was twisty and not exactly well-banked, so she couldn’t get it much over forty. She skidded through the last turn, suddenly remembering the wooden gate that stood as a barrier between the sect’s private lane and Lower Road. It hadn’t looked too sturdy, she thought hopefully.
It turned out that it wasn’t. She crashed though it like she’d crashed the wall of the church, braking into a power turn and skidding momentarily on the van’s two right tires, her right hand flying off the steering wheel and hitting the eight track’s volume knob, blasting the Canned Heat tape up to full volume.
“Going Up The Country” wailed out her window, which she’d cranked down to reduce the smell of Mushroom Daddy’s peculiar incense which actually wasn’t as bad as it had seemed at first. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic as she slewed onto Lower Road, her heart hammering in her chest. She wasted a couple of seconds searching for the right gear as the van lurched crazily up the road, finally found the right sequence, and took it to high as fast as she could. It roared and clattered like a metallic behemoth that should have been extinct long ago, but it responded gamely to her urging and the Angel got it up to over seventy.
The left-hand turn off Lower Road was tricky, but she negotiated the down-shifting with only minor grinding of the gears. The last stretch of road was a long glide up a steep hill, then down again. The grocery store was on the left, at the base. Mere moments had passed since the Holy Ghost had delivered His message, but would she be in time?
The van lurched over the crest of the hill like a prancing mustang, its front tires well off the road. It hit hard and slewed sideways. The Angel bounced up off the driver’s seat, bashed her head on the roof and lost control. Her hands flew off the steering wheel, her feet off the gas pedal. The van spun downhill as the Angel shook her head, trying to clear the stars out of her eyes.
God is with me again, she thought, as she realized that the on-coming lane was clear of traffic. She gamely fought the van for mastery, and through sheer strength managed to haul it back into the right hand lane. But it was facing the wrong direction halfway down the steep hill and in imminent danger of stalling. She clenched her teeth and slammed it into reverse. Gravity did the rest.
The Angel looked at the mirror mounted outside the driver’s side window. Her right foot found the gas pedal again and she stomped it. The van shot backwards down the hill, weaving dangerously as it approached the grocery store’s rutted parking lot. Two cars, were both big black boats of some unfamiliar make and model, were already in the lot. A handful of men stood around watching as two others tried to stuff a wiggling and fighting boy in the back seat of one of the cars.
It was John Fortune. She was, thanks be to God, in time.
She roared into the parking lot backwards, the wheels throwing pebbles like bullets. More through luck than any sort of skill managed to screech into the narrow slot between her enemies’ cars. She stood on the brake with both feet, hitting her head again against the van’s roof and ignoring the pain as the VW slammed to a halt an inch from jumping the curb and crashing into the storefront behind it. She was out of the van before the amazed on-lookers stopped flinching from the shower of pebbles thrown by its squealing tires.
“Release the boy!” she cried in a voice like the ringing of a great iron bell.
There was a moment of silence as everyone, John Fortune included, stood stock still and stared at her, her chest heaving, eyes wild, hair streaming back like a valkryie just come down from Valhalla.
The Angel broke the silence. She growled like a she-wolf, driven to inarticulate fury by their failure to respond to her command, and reached both hands high above her head while saying aloud her short prayer, and called down the fiery sword. She struck one of the cars, hitting the roof dead on center, slicing all the way through to the pavement. The blade threw off coruscating sparks that sent half the on-lookers diving away, screaming and batting at the cinders burning their hands and faces and setting their clothes on fire.
She took a step forward, swinging her sword in a great arc and bringing it down again on the car’s roof with all her strength, cutting through roof and side-panels and neatly bisecting the vehicle. It collapsed in the parking lot with a groan of tortured metal.
“Jesus Christ!” one of the men said.
She turned and back-handed him, sending him flying over the wreckage. “Don’t blaspheme!” she said, and moved around the front of the van which was still chugging in place, pointing her sword at the two men who were still holding John Fortune. “Release the boy,” she repeated, this time in a voice low and hard and full of undefined menace.
They did, but only to reach for guns holstered at shoulder and belt.
The Angel moved faster than seemed humanly possible. She pulled her hands apart and the sword vanished. She slapped one of the men down before he could pull out his gun. The other drew, fired hastily, and his shot spit harmlessly over her shoulder. She closed on him before he could fire again. She grabbed his gun hand, twisted, and heard things break. Some were parts of the gun, some were parts of his hand.
He went down screaming. There were two other men at the front of the car. One had a pistol out, the other was reaching into the car’s front seat for a rifle. The Angel hunched over and scooped John Fortune up with one hand. She reached with the other and snagged the bottom of the car’s driver side rear panel, right by the tire. She grunted with effort and stood, veins pulsing on her neck and forehead, throbbing as if they were going to burst. The muscles in her legs, buttocks, back, and right arm cracking with strain, she heaved.
The car flipped up into the air.
The man reaching for the rifle was thrown to one side. The man with the pistol said, “Oh, shit.” He dove aside but the car came down roof first, mostly on him. He screamed like a cockroach meeting an inescapable size twelve shoe bottom.
The Angel whirled and tossed John Fortune into the van’s passenger side seat as gently as she could, leaped into the van herself, ground a bit more of the transmission to dust, whirled out of the parking lot, and sped off down the county road, across a bridge over a little river and out into open rolling country bordered by lettuce fields and occasional farm houses, going in the direction opposite the camp, away from the useless Creighton, from the useless Billy Ray, and from the blasphemous and scary, if generous, snake handlers. She hoped they wouldn’t think too unkindly of her. She took a deep breath and for the first time took a second to turn off the Canned Heat tape. Enough of that, she thought.
She glanced at John Fortune, who was staring at her like she was some kind of figment from an awful dream. She calmed her breathing, ran a hand through her wild hair.
“Hello, John,” she said in as calm a voice as she could manage. “How are you?”
“I-I’m all right,” he said in a small voice. “Who are you?”
She smiled kindly. “I am your friend. You can call me the Midnight Angel.”
He looked her over carefully. “Are you taking me to my mother?”
Here, she thought, it gets difficult. She could not lie to him.
“No, John.” She looked back out through the windshield. It was best that he learned the full truth as soon as possible. “Have you ever been to Branson, Missouri?”
“No.”
“There’s a theme park there,” she said, trying to put the best possible face on it. “With rides.”
There was a momentary silence, and she glanced back at the boy, afraid of what she might see.
John Fortune nodded. “Cool,” he said.
Fortunato watched as the wild-eyed woman with long black hair roared into the parking lot and proceeded to kick major ass. There was no other way to put it. He would have gladly joined her, but his insubstantiality prevented him from being anything more than an invisible cheering section as she rescued the boy from his abductors.
He watched her rattle off down the road with his son safely in the seat next to her while the still-standing kidnappers tried to roll the flipped Lincoln off their screaming compatriot. Once they succeeded the man didn’t stop screaming. He was in bad shape, with crushed legs and probable internal damage. He needed a hospital, fast.
That reminded Fortunato. Even though his body was safe in a hospital bed, he was actually not in great shape. His spirit had been away from it for quite awhile. While he had achieved much, his success wouldn’t be quite as dramatic if his body perished because he’d left it alone for too long. It was time to go back.
The transition wasn’t instantaneous, but it seemed faster than the trip out. For one thing, he knew where he was going. He didn’t hesitate. He just aimed himself south and flew on the unseen, unfelt etheric winds. For another thing, he had far more energy than he’d had in years. The vigor he’d absorbed from the rich black earth was still singing through his system like high-octane fuel. He didn’t know how much was in his tank, but he was determined to utilize it as best he could. He pushed himself hard, and it was a good thing that he did because he arrived at the clinic just in time.
He opened his eyes to see a frantic Dr. Finn standing over him. His hospital gown was torn open, exposing his chest, which had been smeared with some messy goo. Finn was holding two shiny metal paddles that were hooked up by thickly insulated wires to a machine that had been newly wheeled to his bedside.
“Clear!” Finn yelled, and the nurses jammed around Fortunato’s bed stepped backward.
Fortunato opened his eyes and grabbed Finn’s hands before he could slap the defibrillating paddles onto his chest. He was pretty sure that he didn’t need an electric jolt his heart.
“Fortunato!”
Fortunato couldn’t tell if Finn had shouted in fear or relief, or both. The paddles sagged in the doctor’s grip. “I’m all right, doctor,” he said. “Really. I don’t think I need this.”
“What happened?” Finn asked. “We thought we’d lost you. The monitor showed your heart beat slowing down over the last hour or so, until we couldn’t get a reading and we thought it had stopped.”
“I was gone,” Fortunato said. “For a bit, anyway. Now I’m back.”
Finn handed the paddles to the nurse who was hovering anxiously over his shoulder, without taking his eyes off his patient. “Gone—like on a trip? Were you astral projecting?”
Fortunato nodded.
“Then your powers have returned?” Finn asked.
Fortunato nodded again, cautiously. “It seems so. It’s all so new, that I’m not sure.”
“Uh...” Finn cleared his throat. “They’re not... activated... like in the old days?”
“You mean by Tantric magick and the intromission of my sperm?” Fortunato asked. “That was before your time. How’d you know about that?”
“I’ve read your file,” Finn said. “You’re an unusual patient with unusual powers and presumably unusual strengths and weaknesses. Dr. Tachyon kept extensive notes on you, as he did on many aces and jokers—”
Fortunato laughed quietly. “I hope you didn’t believe all the bad stuff he said about me.”
Finn smiled. “Tachyon was—is—highly opinionated.”
Fortunato’s laughter turned to a sigh. “I’m sure I gave him cause.”
He stared at the ceiling, hardly believing that this notion had come into his head. What am I thinking? Fortunato thought. I must be tired. Over-wrought from the action of the past couple of days. I am getting old.
“What’s the matter?” Finn asked.
“Nothing,” Fortunato said. “I’m just tired. I need some sleep.”
Finn looked at him for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. Do you need anything for the pain?”
Fortunato lay back on the pillow and took stock of his body. The pain from the beating he’d suffered at the hands of the Jokka Bruddas hadn’t entirely vanished, but it had receded from the forefront of his consciousness, going deep into bone and muscle where it was a dully-throbbing presence. He could stand it. He shook his head.
“No,” he said, surprised. “It’s not too bad.”
“All right,” Finn said. “We’ll leave you then.” He stopped at the doorway after the others had streamed out of the room and looked back at Fortunato, shaking his head. “Aces! You always make the worst patients. No more gallivanting around in your astral form. You need rest. Get some.”
“All right.” Even if the boy was safe for the moment, Fortunato still had to be sure of his eventual rescue. But now he knew how to track him anytime he wanted to. Finn was right. Now he needed rest.
Finn switched off the overhead light as he left the room, leaving Fortunato discommoded by the annoying LED lights and rhythmic blips from the machinery and monitors connected to him. He thought that the distractions would make it difficult to sleep, but he was wrong. He closed his eyes and went out almost instantaneously.
While he slept his unconscious mind shunted energy throughout his body, repairing damage old and new, restoring tissue, strengthening ligaments, and mending tendons worn with use and age.
For the first time in years Fortunato slept, and did not dream.