In the center of the rocky field, the Val’s Toyota forklift truck careened in wild circles, its steel prongs menacing a terrified mariner dressed only in tennis shoes and black bathing trunks. Inevitably Thomas thought of the last time he’d seen the forklift in action, the night he and Van Horne had watched Miriam transport a paddock of fresh eggs across the galley. It seemed now as if this very truck had, like the crew, fallen into depravity, seized by some technological analogue of sin.
He twisted the focusing drive. The threatened sailor was Eddie Wheatstone, the alcoholic bos’n Van Horne had jailed for destroying the rec-room pinball machine. Sweat glazed the bos’n’s face. His eyes looked ready to burst. Thomas panned, focused.
Joe Spicer sat behind the steering wheel, dressed in a Michael Jackson T-shirt and khaki shorts, holding a can of Coors: sensitive Joe Spicer, the Merchant Marine’s most civilized officer, the man who brought books to the bridge, now mesmerized by the Idea of the Corpse. Pan, focus. Near the portcullis cowered blubber-bellied Karl Jaworski, the ship’s notorious lecher, in cotton briefs and Indian moccasins. Neil Weisinger, clad in nothing but a jockstrap, lay curled up beside the north wall like a catatonic.
The mismatch between Wheatstone and Spicer was outrageous. True, the bos’n was armed — in his right hand he grasped a stockless anchor from the Juan Fernandez — but no matter which way he dodged, the forklift kept pace with him, its prongs slashing the foggy air like the tusks of a charging elephant. Wheatstone grew wearier by the minute; the priest could practically see the lactic acid fouling the poor man’s blood, byproduct of his muscles’ hopeless attempt to burn up all their sugar.
“It’s even worse than we imagined,” said Thomas, passing the binoculars to his friend. “They’ve gone over to the gods.”
Miriam focused on the field and shuddered. “Is this the future, Tom — vigilante vengeance, public executions? Is this the shape of the post-theistic age?”
“We’ve got to have faith,” he said, taking back the binoculars.
Miraculously, Wheatstone now seized the initiative. As a bestial cry broke from his lips — a howl such as Thomas had last heard at an exorcism — the bos’n set the anchor twirling above his head, apparently aiming to puncture a tire. He released the rope. The anchor flew, hit the forklift’s right prong, and flipped into the mud. Applause erupted from the pagans, appreciation for a futile gesture well done.
Seconds later, they were urging Spicer to retaliate.
“Get him, Joe!” “Run the bastard down!” “Go!” “Go!” “Go!”
Laughing maniacally, Spicer pulled a cargo net from the forklift’s rear compartment and neatly dropped it over the terrified bos’n. Wheatstone tripped, falling face down. The more he fought, the more entangled he became, but it was only after he began sliding forward — body bouncing across the sharp rocks, forehead cutting through the mud like a plow making a furrow — that Thomas noticed the Dacron mooring line running from the cargo net to the rear bumper.
“Tom, he’s gonna kill that man!”
Round and round Spicer towed his prey, as if enacting some grotesque parody of the Val’s mission. Wheatstone screamed. He kicked and flailed. He started coming apart, his liquid constituents leaking through the interstices of the cargo net like squashed tomatoes permeating the bottom of a grocery bag.
When it became clear that Wheatstone was dead, two husky ordinaries rushed onto the field, cut the mooring line, and flung the bos’n’s trussed body toward the portcullis.
The pagans jumped to their feet and cheered.
“Yay, Joe!”
“Way to go!”
“Yay, Joe!”
“Way to go!”
Priest and nun raced into the valley, whimpering in dismay, wet sand grabbing at their boots. Together they passed through the main gate and entered the world beneath the tiers, a maze of slimy, silty tunnels in which plunder from the Val — bazookas, refrigerators, footlockers, diesel generators, video-game consoles — lay about like beached jetsam. Daylight beckoned. A ramp appeared. They charged into the open air.
A river of wine flowed down the marble steps; abandoned sausages festered under the seats; gnawed pizza slices and half-eaten apples rotted in the heat. As Karl Jaworski ran across the arena — ran, literally, for his life — Thomas and Miriam ascended a dozen rows and paused, panting, between Charlie Horrocks, his features buried in a huge slice of watermelon, and Bud Ramsey, his lips locked around a bottle of Budweiser. It took Thomas several seconds to realize that Dolores Haycox and James Echohawk, stretched out on the seats directly in front of him, were engaged in energetic sexual congress.
“Hiya, Father Tom!” said Ramsey. Beer foam flecked his chin. “Afternoon, Miriam.”
“Great party, huh?” said Horrocks, emerging from his watermelon chunk.
Haycox and Echohawk groaned in unison, groping toward orgasms of an intensity that, in the previous era, they could probably only have imagined.
To Horrocks’s left, Karl Jaworski’s three victims — robust Isabel Bostwick, svelte An-mei Jong, exotic Juanita Torres — sat huddled together, blowing kisses toward Spicer. Bostwick licked a Turkish taffy. Jong guzzled a bottle of Cook’s champagne. Dressed only in bra and panties, Torres shook a pair of pompoms she’d improvised by ripping up her Menudo T-shirt and tying the shreds to needle guns.
Despite the vivid frenzy on the field — despite the horrific fact that Spicer had somehow maneuvered Jaworski against the south wall and was now driving straight for him — it seemed to Thomas that what the arena really contained was a kind of Barthian Nichtige: an ontological nothingness where once God’s grace had been, its blind gravity devouring all goodness and mercy like a black hole feasting on light. Jaworski dropped to his knees. Spicer lowered the forklift prongs accordingly. In a choral display of utter joy, Bostwick, Jong, and Torres rose in a body and together shouted, “Kill!”
Thomas could see what was about to happen. He begged God that it wouldn’t.
“Kill!”
“Kill!”
Even as the entreaty took shape on the priest’s lips, the left forklift prong struck Jaworski squarely, slipping into his abdomen as smoothly as the spear of Longinus entering the crucified Savior.
“Bull’s-eye!” squealed Jong as Jaworski, impaled, ascended.
“No!” howled Thomas. “No! No!”
“Calm down, man,” said Ramsey. “Don’t have no fuckin’ cow.”
Spicer backed up. Jaworski, screaming in agony, hung suspended from the prong, wriggling like a beetle on a hatpin.
“No!” moaned Miriam.
“Right on!” yelled Torres.
“Mazel tov!” shouted Bostwick.
Brow knitted in a thoughtful frown, Spicer operated the lift controls, working the prong ever deeper as he raised the skewered man up and down, up and down. Jaworski gripped the wet steel shaft, bathing his hands in his own blood as he attempted, bravely but hopelessly, to free himself.
“Spicer, Spicer, he’s our man!” cried Bostwick. “If he can’t do it, no one can!”
An urge to vomit grew in Thomas, wrenching his stomach and burning his windpipe, as the same ordinaries who’d previously disposed of Wheatstone slid Jaworski’s corpse off the prong and casually dumped it in the mud. Miriam, weeping, took her friend’s hand, digging her thumbnail so deeply into his palm she drew blood. He beat back his nausea through force of will.
“Go, go, Joe, Joe!” shouted Torres, swishing her pom-poms. “Go, go, Joe, Joe! Go, go, Joe, Joe!”
Anchor at the ready, Neil Weisinger stumbled toward the center of the field. Spicer, downshifting, gave chase.
“Stop this!” cried Miriam. She sounded, Thomas had to admit, more like a teacher disciplining a kindergarten than like the voice of reason evoking the spirit of Immanuel Kant. “Stop this right now!”