The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

Hobaica drags his arm over his forehead, wiping away the blood.

“I’m a fool.”

“You bet on the wrong horse, yeah. But you’re not the first one, so don’t beat yourself up.”

I sort of feel bad for the sucker. I mean, his life has been a joke from day one. But Hobaica’s current attitude isn’t a bad way to enter Hell. There’s not much the Hellions can do to him that he isn’t already doing.

He says, “What do I do now?”

“You can stay where you are for the rest of eternity, which, the way things are going, might not be that long. Or you can go inside.”

“To Hell.”

“Yes.”

“So, I can be somewhere awful or nowhere at all.”

“It’s a lousy choice, I know.”

He looks at me. His clothes are speckled with his blood. He looks a little like what he looked like back in the meat locker. It’s pathetic.

“Which would you choose?” he says.

“I didn’t get to make a choice when I went. But if I were you, I’d choose to be someplace. All they can do in Hell is hurt you. Out here with nothing but yourself to talk to, you’re going to destroy your mind. Being alone is worse than being somewhere bad.”

He nods. Even manages the faintest smile in human history.

“Thank you,” he says, and starts for the mountains.

“Vaya con Dios.”

He stops.

“Is that a joke?”

“Yeah. Not one of my best.”

“A bad joke isn’t much of a send-­off before an eternity in Hell.”

“I could tell you the one about the one-­eyed priest and the bowlegged nun.”

“I’ll be going now.”

He walks to the mountain and goes into the tunnel without looking back. It closes behind him. Alone on the alkali plain, I sit down with my legs crossed. I wipe the blood off my face with my hand and the alkali burns the cut in my forehead. The drunken feeling comes over me again. My shoulders sag. My head falls forward and my mouth opens. Something light drifts out and settles on my leg.

I wake up in the circle across from the severed head. There’s a puddle underneath it where it’s starting to defrost. Candy takes my arm and helps me up. I run my fingers over my forehead. No blood. Score one for the bag of bones. I didn’t have to bleed in real life after all.

I put Hobaica’s head back in the cooler and hand it to Wells.

“I’m done with this. It’s your problem now.”

He sets it on the floor. Goes to a sink and washes his hands.

“Did it work? Did you see anything?”

“Some bad dental work. And fire

. And bodies being ripped apart. The meat locker where I found ice-­chest man was feng-­shuied with body parts.”