Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

He points to the flat-screen with a shrimp in one of his metal doggie hands.

“Did you see when you came in? Big Bill Wheaton is dead. Laid low by the crazy little ghost not five minutes ago at a press conference he called to—you’ll love this—announce a special serial-killer task force. Is that fucking funny or what?”

He eats half the shrimp in one bite.

“They sure it wasn’t a volcano or dinosaur?”

“Nah. That stuff seems to have calmed down some.”

If that’s your doing, Patty, thanks.

“If you know something about that stuff, keep it to yourself. I’m working on some serious denial over here,” says Kasabian.

I button another of Samael’s dark shirts over the armor.

“A while back you said that spending all that time alone at Max Overdrive, you’d developed some nefarious computer skills.”

“Yeah. You looking for missile-launch codes now?”

“No. Child murders. Maybe ritual killings. Not beaten or abused, just cut up. See if you can find anything.”

He frowns.

“What, the mayor getting murdered by a ghost isn’t interesting enough for you?”>“But you helped.”

“Russian roulette is a hell of a game. Second place sucks as much as, well, there isn’t anything worse than second.”

“You cheated, didn’t you?”

“I’m not stupid enough to play Russian roulette with Mason for real.”

Up ahead, it looks like a small nuke went off. A deep crater is spread over four square blocks. Buildings and the remains of cars and street signs lie in heaps on the edge of the blast zone.

“What’s Hell like?”

“It’s not as bad as this. Normal people would rather be inconvenienced by Hellions than be this bored for the next billion years.”

“They don’t have any imagination. We make our own fun. Did you ever lie on your back, look up at the sky, and make garbage angels? It’s very cathartic.”

“You tunnel in the dirt and play in garbage. You’ve come a long way since the Lollipop Dolls.”

“I miss the old gang. I wonder how they are.”

“I’m dating someone with an anime and manga fetish. I’ll ask her.”

The crowd behind us keeps growing. It’s officially a throng on its way to becoming a mob. Off to the side are groups of kids in dirty rags—eight, nine, and ten years old—standing off by themselves.

“Who are they?”

Cherry doesn’t even look at them.

“They’re lost kids. Ones that all died badly.”

I think she’s telling the truth. The kids look worse than I do. They’re crisscrossed with knife slashes. Long straight cuts along their throats. More slashed and crescent-moon marks on their arms and faces.

“Does anyone do anything for them?”

“They’re not exactly chatty. Little savages. They keep to themselves and we leave them alone.”