The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

We go out into the rain. Smokers huddle under the awning. A few of the regulars nod and wave. I don’t wave back.

The kid walks all the way to the curb. I stay a ­couple of steps behind him. We stand there in the rain like a ­couple of assholes. He steps into the street between two cars, looking around like he’s waiting for a cab.

“You saw a golden woman in the water. There,” he says, pointing west to the Pacific.

“I remember.”

When Kill City collapsed into the ocean a few weeks ago, I was in it. Something that looked like a woman covered in gold swam up from the wreckage and tried to pull me down.

“She served the Hand. She was beautiful.”

“Except for the part where half her face was missing.”

He nods. His long hair is plastered to his head, covering one eye.

“She was incomplete. That won’t happen again.”

“You couldn’t tell me this inside, where it’s dry?”

He holds his hands out wide.

“You don’t understand what’s happening and even if you did you can’t stop it. The old ones are coming. They will bless us with annihilation.”

A delivery truck speeds up the street. It swerves toward the curb. Hits the cars the kid is standing between. The impact drives both cars up onto the sidewalk. The kid is still between them, but now he’s in two pieces. A girl screams and keeps on screaming.

The kid’s friends must have followed us outside. A ­couple of the other Goth kids run to the curb like maybe they can put their friend back together again. I climb over the trunk of one of the wrecked cars. Go to the truck and pull the driver-­side door open. The driver half falls out, held in place by his seat belt. His head is pulped from smashing into the windshield. I test his seat belt. It’s locked right across his body. It doesn’t make sense that he could have hit the inside of the windshield. Unless someone else belted him in after his head was in pieces and he was dead. I step up onto the running board to check out his body. His right arm is gone. Cut off neatly at the shoulder. Another Angra groupie? I can see why he’d sacrifice himself, but why take out the kid? No way he was looking to die.

I start back into the bar. The kid’s phone rings. He had it in his hand the whole time.

“Don’t touch it,” I say.

I kneel down and pry it from his hand. One of the boys vomits into the street. I go back inside the bar and head straight for the men’s room, where it’s quieter. No one is inside. I shove a trash can under the doorknob so no one can get in. Where the number of the caller should be displayed it says BLOCKED. I thumb the phone on.

“He’s right, you know. You can’t stop it.”

There’s static on the line, but I know the voice. This isn’t the first time he’s crank-­called me from Hell.

“Fuck you, Merihim.”

Merihim is head of the Hell’s one official church. But it was all a ruse. He’s also in a Hellion Angra cult. A lot of the fallen angels want the old gods back so that they’ll destroy the universe, hoping it will relieve them of the torments of Hell. It’s the biggest suicide pact in the history of creation.

“Try again. Do you think there’s only one who can speak through mortals?”

The line static clears up.

“Deumos?”

She’s another fallen angel. She ran another underground, radical church in Hell. Except it was all a con job. She was working with Merihim to bring the Angra back. I guess you can’t trust Hellions or preachers. Who would have guessed?

“The who doesn’t matter. The what matters. Return the Qomrama Om Ya. That’s the only way the killing will end.”

“So you can summon the Angra? I know how you want things to end.”

“Admit it. You’re as exhausted by existence as we are. Help us end it.”

“Hello? Say that again. It’s hard to hear you over the bullshit.”

There’s a pause. I start to think that the line has gone dead.