“Some ran,” said J.B.
“One day, Mr. Dix, I shall entertain you with the tale of the man who had an appointment in Samarra. You can run faster than the wind, but Death will always o’ertake you. These two had warning, and they chose to die together, in each other’s arms, perhaps with some good corn liquor to warm their passing. It was a more dignified departure from life than many enjoyed.”
“That is sad,” Lori said quietly.
“Yeah. Let’s leave ’em,” agreed Finnegan, leading them out of the suite of death.
RYAN AND KRYSTY found bodies in half a dozen rooms in the Holiday Inn of West Lowellton. Most were in the beds.
Not all.
One skeleton was in the bathtub. The pale pearlized sides were streaked with clotted black marks, thick around the top. In the bottom, almost hidden by the slumped pelvis, was a slim razor blade, its edges dulled with the long-dried blood. The skull hung forward, drooping in a final disconsolate slump. Shreds of long gray hair were still pasted to the ridges of the head.
The right hand, which had been dangling outside the tub, had become detached and lay in an untidy heap of carpals and phalanges on top of an open book. “What is it?” asked Ryan.
Krysty stooped to pick it up, keeping her finger between the open pages. “The Bible. Whoever it was got in a warm tub and opened up his or her veins. Uncle Tyas McNann told me it was how the old Greeks and Romans used to take their lives.”
“What chapter was he or she reading?” Krysty examined the heading that the dead fingers had marked, stumbling over some of the unfamiliar language. “It’s from the New Testamentthe First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians.”
“Who were they?”
“Some old Romans or Greeks, I guess, lover. It’s open at chapter thirteen.”
“Read a little, Krysty.”
The girl began, her voice rising with the mouth-filling phrases of the King James text. “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly.'”
She stopped there, turning her face to his, and he saw the tears streaking her cheeks. “One day, Krysty” he said.
THEY MET UP AGAIN in the lobby about half an hour later. All were subdued by the macabre experience of touring the luxurious mausoleum. Lori had been crying, and Doc Tanner was showing worrisome signs of retreating once more into a catatonic madness. His eyes had become hooded, as if they’d been painted with a thin veil of beeswax. Occasionally he would mutter. “Madness,” or “Oh, the horror of it all. The bastards! Insane, criminal bastards!”
Ryan took them to the kitchen, gave everyone a torch and showed them how to prime them with the pushbutton. He and Finn and J.B. took a spare light to hang on their belts. He and Krysty also showed everyone the supplies of food.
It seemed like there’d be no way of heating anything up, but Finn went fossicking around the storage closets, emerging with a red cylinder of camping gas. Lori teetered off and brought in pans of discolored water from the streams around the motel, heating them and tipping in the unappetizing powders, stirring them to form a bland thick soup. Krysty added some salt and pepper from the metal condiment containers on the tables in the Atchafalaya Dining Room.
Finnegan disappeared through the heavy doors of the Cajuns’ Bar, which were covered with shreds of rotted maroon velvet, He returned with a dozen bottles in his arms.
They sat and drank, mostly in silence. Some of the wine ‘was still drinkable, despite having stood untouched on shelves for almost a century. Best was a couple of quarts of imported French brandy, thick and sweet, to be savored on the palate, with a fiery kick that didn’t register properly until it was well down the throat.
“Bar was filled with bones. Must have been the best parts of ten to fifteen people all jumbled in the joint. Some was women. Remains of some fancy shoes in among the ribs and skulls.”