When he gets back to the hideout, carrying Houndawg through the sudden violent return of the storm, he finds Deacon stretched out on his belly, getting his big butt tattooed by Spider by light from the fire and the lamp of one of the mining helmets they stole. Sick is stripped to a loin cloth and feathers and is doing an Indian dance around the fire, his topknot wagging. “Hey, it’s Kid Rivers,” Deacon says, grunting from the needle’s pain. Others call him Kid in greeting. They’re making fun but they’re not making fun. Deacon has been preparing them. Nat Baxter is dead. It’s how he likes it. Like a superhero emerging from his weakling disguise. The Kid. Juice’s abandoned jazzed-up bike — what Houndawg called a garbage wagon and Face used to call “Juice’s Jukebox”—had a sticker on its back fender that said “Watch your ass! Jesus is coming and He is mad as hell!” Deacon admired that and it’s what he’s having tattooed on his own backside. He says it’s a kind of tribute to crazy Juice. Spider is even adding a small motorbike speeding across the top of the letters, the cyclist longhaired with a blue headband. Spider calls the body just a big web for catching things, especially things that matter to the body’s owner and to nobody else, and he prefers original designs over the classic ones, often linking them up with thin threadlike lines. His own body is tracked by those crisscrossing lines. Maybe it’s how he got his name, or maybe his name gave him the idea. When Chepe Pacheco joined the gang, he had only two tattoos: one a traditional rose with the word “Mamacita” under it, the other the badge of a previous gang with skulls and daggers and something written in Spanish. He accepted the Wrath of God tattoo somewhat reluctantly, but then liked Spider’s work so much he began drawing pictures for him of things he remembered from his home country — which is a hot wet place somewhere south of what Cubano called May-hee-ko — for Spider to use as the basis for new designs, adding a new tattoo in and around the needle tracks every week or so. Spider likes to show off Chepe to strangers like a sort of walking gallery. Chepe thinks of it as a kind of personal photo album and checks the pictures out from time to time with his side mirrors. Too fancy for Nat, whose skin, bike, and jacket are kept relatively unmarked, except for the identifying emblems of the Wrath. And he has no time for the past.
Thaxton has come back from hunting with the prize quarry of the day: a wild turkey. Thax is a mean dude, has known a lot of trouble, done prison time, digs the holy war concept. He’s not a comicbook reader, but he has that style, knows all the grisly ways the saints died, shares the Wrath’s hatreds. Came with the Crusadeers, but Juice didn’t know him, didn’t think the others did either. They’ll have the turkey for supper. Deacon offers to prepare it. He lets them know he was once a chef in a fancy New Orleans restaurant. They don’t have an oven, but that’s all right — he’ll cook it over the fire in a whiskey sauce. Rupert asks for the feathers. To make a pillow, he says, which makes everyone laugh. Rupe can have them, Teresita says, if he’ll pluck the bird. The Wrath are in a lot of trouble, but they’re safe in here, the park empty, rain pouring down, thunder cracking; the Big One concealing them, preparing them. But there’s also a lot of restlessness. When they were holed up in the shack, they called it cabin fever. What would it be called now? The storm has blackened the skies, turning the sun into darkness, like it says in the Bible; but for the miner’s lamp setting Deacon’s butt aglow, their rocky hideout is lit only by the wood fire and the occasional flash of lightning. Faces a spooky ripple of light and shadows. Nobody’s saying anything. They’re waiting for him to tell them what happens next. They have to wait for the rain to stop — can’t light fuses in the rain — but it will stop. Maybe tonight.
“So, what’s exercising you, Kid?” Deacon asks, sitting up. “Say the magic word.”
Nat doesn’t preach. He hates preaching. Anything that stinks of church services. He doesn’t pray either, not in public, just shouts sometimes at the Big One. “I think we got some killings to avenge,” he says now. “They gotta feel our anger.” That’s his way of explaining it to the others. In his mind, those killings have just been part of what’s really happening. The war of the gods. What happens next was always going to happen, with or without the killings. He has his shirt and jacket back on now. He feels older in them. His head is clearer. Vengeance is part of it, of course. The Big One’s way of motivating. He used to imagine being Robin after the brutal torture, disfigurement, and murder of Batman. The rage that would consume him purely put him above the law. That’s what he has been feeling since the murder of Littleface during these long weeks on the road. The wrath. He has a detailed battle plan — who goes where and when, what to do if things go wrong — that he’s plotted out with Houndawg. They’ll start with the power plant and phone exchange. The radio station. Then the power centers, beginning with the schools and churches, followed by city hall, the police, jail, fire station, bank, and businesses. All carefully timed. He has hand-drawn maps with everything marked. Systematically destroy it all. Bring the sick town to its knees, like Deacon says. By his cruelty he will instill fear into the peoples. The dwelling place of the wicked shall come to nought. He had not planned to include the church camp, but after what happened today: it’s another target. It will have to be annihilated. A word he learned only a year or so ago. His old man used it in a sermon. Hated the sermon. Digs the word. A great battle, and he will call upon the dead Warriors to be with them. He gets the maps out of his backpack, spreads them on the dirt floor. He also has marked the overland escape routes via the rail beds the Apostles discovered when they were here last time. But things still aren’t just right. He’s looking for a phrase, or for something to happen. Something does. Baptiste returns. “They chased me. Lots of ’em. And they was roadblocks.” He is excited. They’re excited. “But the weather was bad. They couldn’t send up choppers, and the bike could go fuckin’ anywhere, through any kinda shit. Finally I shucked ’em, left ’em off in the next state somewheres chasing their assholes. If we stay outa sight, they’ll figger we’re long gone.” Flickering grins now on the faces around the fire. They’re a unit. Everything’s cool. “All right,” Kid Rivers says quietly, moving toward the flames, gunbelt over his shoulder. “Here’s the plan…”
This is war. They’re ready for it.
IV.5 Monday 6 July
The rain drums oppressively on the Halls’ little caravan roof. It has hardly stopped since yesterday afternoon. Willie came in wearing his visored cap down over his ears and declared, “That selfsame day was all the founts a the deep broke up and the windas a Heaven was opent and the rain was ’pon the earth forty days’n forty nights! Genesis 7:11–12!” And then he went back to his room again. He is terrified by what has happened and will not leave the caravan, rarely leaves his room. Mabel is frightened, too; they are all frightened. Nothing has prepared them for what they saw when they came running back from the Mount of Redemption yesterday. A scene of such horror as to make one’s knees fold. They could not even be sure how many bodies there were, so ruined were they. Poor dear Ben was there, his head shot up so bad he could hardly be recognized. Clara collapsed with a terrible cry when she saw him. Billy Don raced back to the sickbay cabin to get the stretcher and he and Uriah carried her through the sudden storm to her house trailer. At first they thought there were only three bodies other than Ben’s because there were only three heads and six feet to go with the three motorbikes parked by the back road, but there were enough other parts that what was left did not fit into just three bodies. Maybe, someone said, the ones who got away are cannibals. With what they have seen so far, one can expect just about anything, no matter how ghastly.