“Water in well. Take what need. No food.”
“Why?”
“Get what deserve in life, not what ask for. Just askin’ doesn’t mean gettin’.”
The religious madman stamped the butt of his staff in the dirt, raising a tiny cloud of sandy dust that instantly vanished in the wind.
“We are many and you are few.”
Dean’s voice came from one of the attic windows. “We come cheaper by the dozen.”
Simon looked up, seeming aware for the first time of the curtains flapping over the partly open casements. “How many of you? How many? Not so many as us.”
“Enough,” Mildred said.
“We deal in the word of the Almighty and cruel Lord and will punish the graceless at his command.”
Jak sighed. “And we deal in lead.” He stepped out into the light, his blaster drawn.
The sun blazed off his pure-white hair, flaring like a magnesium grenade, catching the ruby glint in the eyes and revealing the long pallor of the tomb in his cheeks.
Three of the Slaves of Sin dropped to their knees, crossing themselves and beginning to patter a furious litany of prayer. Even the Apostle Simon was startled enough to take three stumbling steps backward.
“God protect us,” he gasped, holding the staff toward the albino teenager as though it would hold some nameless and blasphemous entity at bay.
“Take water and go,” Jak said.
“You are the promised Antichrist!” Simon turned to his thirteen followers. “It is written that he shall have eyes of fire and a halo of silver light, and he shall come to Earth to destroy all that is pure and holy.”
Mildred laughed. “You shit for brains bastard! My daddy was a minister and he’d have had you slung out of any church he ever preached in for this crap.”
“And his concubine shall have skin of ebony,” the leader of the flagellants screeched.
The black woman shook her head, the beaded plaits tinkling against one another. “Put a bullet through his knees, Jak. Get the sickos out of here.”
“Heard lady.” Jak gestured with the cannon-mouthed Python. “Off my land by noon.”
Simon went through a sudden and total change of personality. He lowered the staff and smiled at Jak. “I should not have spoken as I did. Foolish pride and prick-powered anger. The goat of Mendes entered my brain and stole my tongue. Dialogue is a two-way street, is it not?”
Jak’s expression didn’t shift. “Waste of time buttering steak after it’s eaten. Take water and go. Noon.”
“Could we camp out yonder for one more night, friend? We are greatly fatigued and we fear that we might meet the horned beast whose name may not be whispered. And us weakened and unready to defeat it.”
“Dawn tomorrow. Find you on land after that and blood gets spilled.”
The flaggelants’ leader bowed so low that his matted hair tumbled over his face, hiding his eyes and mouth from the watchers in the house. “Kindness such as this shall be rewarded. Oh, truly shall it be rewarded.”
Mildred spoke quietly to Jak, a few paces away from her on the porch. “Trust him just about as far as I could kick his skinny ass.”
“I know it.”
“Why not scoot them off now?”
“Ryan said talk beats chilling.”
Mildred smiled. “That sounds more like one of the notorious sayings of good old Trader.”
“Could be.”
The Apostle Simon had been staring intently at them during the whispered exchange. It crossed Mildred’s mind that the man might have the gift of reading lips. Unaccountably, in the warmth of the sun, she shuddered.
Now he banged the end of his staff into the earth, three times. “We are sent away hungered, brothers. Vengeance belongs to the Master of us all, He who orders us to punish and purge and cleanse our own flesh through mortification. We have been lax, brothers. Through the rest of this day we shall scourge one another, turn and turn about, until the blood flows over our ankles. Then, He will show us the true path.”
Without another word or glance at Jak, Mildred or the house, Simon turned about and led his little band of fanatics back into the desert. The one who had been carrying the cross fought to lift it again, dragging it behind him, gouging a great furrow in the dry dirt.