“I frisked him myself, Malcolm.” Skeleton man sneered at Rakkim. “Besides, seems to me the Antichrist could do better than these two.”
“You’re an expert on the Antichrist, are you?”
“No…no, Malcolm.”
A crowd had gathered-hard, disheveled men, faces crusted with dirt.
“What if he swallowed a tracking device?” Crews said lightly. “My enemies might already be on their way, with iniquity in their hearts.”
Skeleton man bowed his head. “Forgive…forgive me, Malcolm.”
“Go and sin no more.” Crews drew a pistol and blew skeleton man’s brains out. As the sound of the gunshot echoed, skeleton man sat down, then fell backward onto the ground. Crews was fast. Fedayeen fast, maybe.
Leo closed his eyes, trembling.
Rakkim kicked dirt on the body of skeleton man. “Well, one nice thing about hell, there’s always a vacancy.”
Shouts from the crowd. Demands for Rakkim and Leo to be skinned alive…and worse. Crews paid them no mind, his attention on Rakkim. A short man wearing dirty glasses squeezed through, wanded Rakkim with a sensor stick. Then Leo. He looked up at Crews, pushed back his glasses. “They’re clean.”
“No one’s clean,” said Crews. “All have fallen short of the glory of God.” The breeze made the flowers in his hair flutter. “Any last words?”
“Come closer,” said Rakkim. “I’ve got something for you.”
Crews watched him. Wolf eyes under a full moon. All pupil.
Rakkim shifted his tongue, slid the silver coin half out of his mouth.
“Something for the ferryman?” Crews snatched the moist shekel from Rakkim’s mouth. His eyes widened slightly as he looked at the coin.
“What is it, Malcolm?” said one of the skeleton men in the crowd. “Malcolm?”
“Untie him,” said Crews, still staring at the coin. “Untie the both of them.”
The short man snipped the wires that bound Rakkim.
Rakkim rubbed his wrists, taking his time. He nodded at Leo, who couldn’t seem to stop shaking.
“You surprise me, pilgrim.” Crews suddenly embraced Rakkim, kissed him on both cheeks. His breath was foul and the flowers in his hair brushed against Rakkim’s neck, their cool, spongy touch like dead fingers. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Rikki. This is Leo.”
“Walk with me,” said Crews. “My flock will take care of Leo.”
Rakkim waved to Leo, then followed Crews into the woods, the two of them slipping into the twilight canopy. No one came after them. Crews was either sure of Rakkim or, more likely, sure of himself.
Crews rubbed the coin as they walked. “You always travel with a Jew, Rikki?”
This whole time in the Belt, Crews was the only one who had recognized Leo as Jewish. The South wasn’t nearly as anti-Semitic as the Islamic Republic, but there were plenty of good Christians who thought the Jews had got what was coming to them. “I travel with a couple of other Jews too,” he said. “Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.”
“A good answer.” Crews held the coin by the edge. “Did the Jew give you the shekel of Tyre?”
“Now I’m the one surprised,” said Rakkim. “I didn’t know if you’d recognize it.”
“I asked you a question.”
“No…I didn’t get it from Leo. I got it from my grandfather.”
Crews smiled. “And you gave it to me. How thoughtful.” He led Rakkim deeper into the woods, up a steep, twisting trail, in the increasing darkness. Wind trickled through the trees, cold and damp. Most men would have been exhausted by the climb, but Crews wasn’t even breathing hard, seemingly exhilarated by the exertion and their solitude. “So why have you come here, pilgrim?” He flipped the coin, caught it deftly, and held it up for Rakkim to admire. “You and your silver shekel.”
“You’ve heard about the Colonel digging up Thunderhead Mountain?”
“I’ve gotten reports.” Crews scrambled up the slope, all arms and legs, leaping from boulder to boulder. “Verily, it’s written that in the last days the wicked will seek to bury themselves in the earth, to hide from the wrath of God.”
“The Colonel isn’t hiding. He’s looking for something.”
Crews stopped just below the summit of the path, fixed Rakkim with a red glare in the setting sun. “We’re all looking for something, pilgrim.”
“He’s looking for other coins just like the one in your hand.” Rakkim climbed up beside Crews. “He’s looking for the other twenty-nine pieces of silver.”
“Ah, yes, the price for betraying the Prince of Peace, the bounty on God, the blackest of black magic.” Crews lightly stroked the raw edge of the coin, watching Rakkim. “Evidently, the Colonel will believe anything.”
“The Colonel didn’t believe me at first either, even after I showed him the coin, but I guess he made some inquiries…maybe checked with some people from the old days, folks who might have heard tales of what was buried.” He flinched as Crews gripped his shoulder. “The old USA., richest, most powerful nation on earth,” he hurried, “and…and all that time no one ever asked how it happened, what was the source of that power. My grandpa was part of the unit that moved the coins out from under the Washington Monument during the last days, hid them in the mountain for safekeeping-Ahhhh!” He squirmed as Crews dug deeper into his flesh. “My grandpa…he was the ranking officer. He stole one of the coins, said if Judas himself couldn’t resist temptation, how could he?”
“How could any of us, pilgrim?” Crews relaxed his grip.
“My grandpa said the man on the shekel was a Roman emperor.”
“Your grandfather was an ignoramus,” said Crews. “That’s Melqarth on the coin, the Carthaginian god of the underworld, but I wouldn’t expect you to know that.” He smoothed Rakkim’s hair. “Are you sure it’s only the rest of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver down there? What about a sliver of the true cross?” His eyes caught the last of the sunset. “I heard Ben Franklin himself brought a piece of the cross back from France. A sliver of wood with the power to heal the sick and raise the dead, turn water to wine.”
“I don’t know anything about-”
Crews gobbed a wad of spit on Rakkim’s boot. “Pardon me, pilgrim. Must have been the taste of bullshit in my mouth.”
“That’s not-”
“I may command a host of inbreds and psychopaths, but I’m an educated man. I was a university professor once, a tenured professor.” Crews clutched the coin. “Why would you share such a treasure if it really existed? You love me, pilgrim? You have a schoolboy crush on the professor?”
“I’m one man. You’ve got an army.”
“So does the Colonel.”
“The Colonel’s going to sell the treasure,” said Rakkim. “You’d use the thirty pieces of silver the way it was meant to be used.”
“How do you know what I would do with the silver?”
Rakkim raised his right hand, showed the brand from the Church of the Mists. “Because I’d do the same, exact thing.”
Crews looked at his own hand, slowly placed it next to Rakkim’s. The brands were identical, the white scars a perfect match. He started to speak, stopped.
“Yeah,” said Rakkim. “Ain’t that something?”
The wind whipped Crews’s hair, scattered yellow flowers.
“I don’t know how it was for you, but I must have wandered in the smoke for hours, choking on the stink, about to cough up a lung,” said Rakkim, the brand throbbing in the dying light. “I thought for certain I was going to burn up…then God led me through the flames to the door.”
“The door, yes,” Crews said gently. “Were you able to enter, pilgrim?”
Rakkim hesitated, saw something in those wolf eyes. “No…no, I wasn’t.”
Crews relaxed slightly. “Me neither. I beat on that door till my hands were raw, but it wouldn’t budge.” He showed his sharp, tiny teeth. “Saved by the grace of God, but condemned to forever remain on the doorstep, never allowed inside. That’s who we are.”
Rakkim nodded.
“Don’t despair.” Crews fingered the shekel, lost himself in the feel of it. “You can sense the darkness, can’t you? Power and dominion over earthly desires…the pure temptation. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have been as interested in a piece of the true cross as I am in this tainted thing. You ask me, Judas got a bad rap.” He jabbed the coin at the sky. “There’s a battle coming, pilgrim, good and evil, heaven and hell, and no mercy at all, not a bit of it. Perhaps once we drown the unrighteous in a sea of blood…perhaps then God will reconsider our exile from Paradise.”