Angelinos are used to desert heat and chocolate--colored smog skies. Rain is kryptonite to these -people, so there’s hardly anyone outside. The few rain birds hear me coming and jump out of the way. The only casualty of my sidewalk Le Mans is a sign outside a café and a bench outside a Chinese restaurant. No one’s used the damned thing in weeks and no one will until the world ends, which means it shouldn’t even be there, so fuck it.
I turn hard at the corner. The rear end of the van fishtails and hits a mailbox. Letters explode like New Year’s confetti over the stalled cars.
“Jerk,” says Candy. “Now -people’s Christmas cards are getting wet.”
“Will you shut up about Christmas and help me look for the car?”
Traffic is a little lighter on the side street, so the Charger could still be ahead. Or have pulled off into a parking lot or another side street.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
On the next block is a row of warehouses. Distribution points. The kind of places that get goods from big warehouses and parcel them out to regular stores.
“There,” says Candy. “By the open loading dock.”
I look to where she’s pointing and spot the Charger. It’s sideways to the dock and the driver--side door is open; not parked, but abandoned. I stop the Escalade and get out. Instantly, I’m soaked. My frock coat, motorcycle pants, and boots weren’t made for this Noah’s ark bullshit. It feels like I’ve gained twenty pounds before I take a step.
Candy comes around the van. I start across the street.
“You got your gun?”
She holds up her Swiss folding pistol. Unopened, it looks kind of like a skinny lunch box. She’s covered it with stickers from some of her favorite animes. FLCL. Ghost in the Shell. Blood. Appleseed. She pushes a button and the lunch box unfolds like a matte--black Transformer into an extended 9mm pistol with a shoulder stock. She grins. She always grins when she gets to use her gun because she thinks she’s Modesty Blaise and who am I to tell her she’s not?
“I’m going in the front. Go around the side and see if there’s a back way in. If you can’t get through it, make sure no one gets out.”
As she starts away she says, “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Right. That’s how you got all those scars. From being careful.”
I wait for her to disappear around the side of the building before I go in. I jump up onto the Charger’s hood and from there onto the dock platform.
It’s at least twenty degrees colder inside the warehouse. I spot maybe fifteen -people working. Carrying boxes and driving forklifts. It’s a meat--packing plant, prepping orders to take to butcher shops. I can see my breath in front of my face.
Wells gave me a photo of the man I’m supposed to follow but I don’t see him among the faces up front. I head into the back of the plant to the big freezer. The entrance is covered with a thick plastic curtain with slits every -couple of feet so forklifts can pass in and out. I grab a clipboard off a nail on the wall and stroll past a forklift coming the other way.
Inside the freezer the real cold hits me. This isn’t muggy L.A. showers weather. This is penguin country. I swear my wet clothes start freezing to my body.
They must be doing good business at the warehouse. The freezer stretches away in both directions, full of sides of beef on nasty--looking meat hooks. I don’t want to go in unarmed, but I might as well try the discretion thing as long as I can. I take out the na’at instead of my gun. The na’at is a weapon I picked up in the arena in Hell. It collapses to no longer than a cop’s riot baton, but can extend like a spear or a whip. It isn’t always a quiet weapon because of all the screaming, but it’s more subtle than a Colt pistol.
I snap open the na’at into a spear shape and move through the meat forest as quietly as I can. This might be a mistake. Maybe I should have checked the office first. But Wells didn’t say anything about the guy working here and most -people when they’re scared head as far from the front door as possible. That’s back here. Still, after staring at row after row of dead cow, I’m getting bored and hungry. Then I spot a different kind of light a few rows ahead. It’s softer and more diffuse than in the rest of the freezer, and tinged in pink. I head for it and find Mr. Charger. He’s not alone.
Thirteen of them stand in a circle in an open area in the back of the freezer. By open area, I mean there aren’t any sides of beef hanging back here, but there’s a hell of a lot of meat. They’ve made a whole cathedral of the stuff. Arches made from ribs, livers, hearts, and leg bones all frozen together. A vaulted ceiling from muscle trimmed from sides of beef hanging on high hooks. Their flesh church even has nave windows made of stitched--together sheets of pig caul. The light back here is a milky crimson.
All thirteen of them, six men and seven women, smile at me. Big and toothy.
“It took you long enough to find us,” says Mr. Charger.
“Sorry. I took a wrong turn at the pork chops.”
“No worries. You’re here. That’s all that matters.”
I know I should watch the crazies, but I can’t take my eyes off the meat Notre--Dame.
“I love what you’ve done with the place. Ed Gein chic.”
“Thank you. It took some time to get it just right.”
“Who’s your decorator? We’re finishing my new place and there’s all this leftover chorizo. Maybe we could use it for a rumpus room.”
Mr. Charger doesn’t say anything because he’s watching me as I see it.
Not all the meat in the church is animal. There’s a human body cut into six pieces—-arms, legs, torso, and head—-hanging like nightmare pi?atas over the smiling circle of freaks.
Mr. Charger says, “Do you understand why you’re here?”
“If you think I’m going to be the next one hanging from those hooks, you’re extremely mistaken.”
Normally, I could probably handle a flock of unarmed fruit bats. Hell, the freezer is big enough that I could just run away if I broke a nail. But these particular fruit bats are all armed. Each holds a wicked--looking motorized meat saw, like an oversize electric knife. Outwardly they all look calm, but they’re sweating, even in this cold. They smell of fear and adrenaline. The sweat steams from their bodies and collects at the ceiling like incense in their mad church.
Mr. Charger shakes his head.
“We’re not here to hurt you. You’re here to help us.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
Mr. Charger looks around at his friends.
“God told us.”
I shake my head.
“I’m kind of acquainted with God and I don’t think he told you dick.”
A thin redhead from the back says, “We mean the true God.”
“Oh hell. You’re Angra worshipers, aren’t you? Is that what this is all about? I don’t mean to cramp your little chautauqua, but my boss wants a word with you. How about you put down the saws and you can come and be crazy where it’s warm?”
A chuckle goes around the circle.
“I’m not going with you because I’m not here for you. You’re here for us,” says Mr. Charger.
“If you’re selling candy bars to go to summer camp, I’m tapped out right now.”
Mr. Charger raises his meat saw. I move my weight onto my back leg, ready to move when he tells them to rush me.
“We don’t want anything from you except to be our witness.”
“To what?”
“The sacrifice.”
Without another word or a signal, all thirteen of them raise their meat saws to their throats.
Mr. Charger is the first to shove the buzzing saw into his neck. He screams, but just for a second before the blade rips through his larynx and his throat fills with blood. He goes down twitching as the others fire up their own saws, following their leader’s example. It’s the same for all of them. A small scream as the blade tears into them. A gurgling as their voice box goes, the blood fills their throat and jets from their severed arteries. It only takes a few seconds and all thirteen are on the floor, their blood steaming on the cold metal. Their saws rattle and buzz where they dropped them.
I’ve seen some cold moves in my time, I’ve fought and killed in Hell and on earth, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.
Over the sound of the saws I hear voices. All the screaming got someone’s attention. That’s all I need. A warehouse of hysterical meat packers with big knives and cell phones. Imagine explaining this to a 911 operator. It might take awhile to get a patrol car. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. I’m not in the mood to deal with another crazed mob right now.
They’re getting near me now and I let them. When the first few tough guys emerge from the rows of beef and see me in the meat cathedral surrounded by freezing corpses, they stop. Good. They’re not going to rush me but they’re still between me and the door. I pull the Colt and shoot three rounds into the floor by their feet. That alters their mood and sends them scurrying like sensible rats out of there.
Only one person is still coming in my direction. Candy shoulders her way between the beef rows, her gun up, sweeping the room. But when she sees me, even she stops. For a second I can see it in her eyes. She wonders if I did this. Then she sees the meat saws and relaxes. She lowers her gun and comes over to me.
“Oh man,” she says. “I mean. Oh man.”