(no subject)
I know that no one wiill read this but here's the first part of the end of the trilogy in it's entirety and been writing like a demon and I think it's going damn well
“I was already burning, a straight goddamn torch ready to spark out.” Dylan turned uncomfortably. He was nearly numb. He’d been driving for over 5 hours. His hand gripped the steering wheel tighter and harder than he realized. His right leg was stiff and throbbing. “I had made a habit the summer after I finished high school of walking to beach, during the early evening, to sit for hours and smoke cigarettes. Everything just felt clear and simple there. The only pain, the only torment there was trying to light a smoke in the wind. Well that and dealing with the realization that everyone else there was with someone, or had some purpose for being there. I was alone, and a little lost. Still there had never been and has never again been a moment as pure and as livable in my life as those moments I spent staring into the ocean. In that vastness was the only peace I’ve ever found. For some reason unknown to me it made sense, and even it was really nothing at all. Sometimes John came too. John…Saint John had caught the disease. I saw the sickness in him, and what little was left of my friend. I threw him to the goddamn dogs and I knew it. This is the kind of shit that hits you after 5 hours + of super highway. God, I’ve been driving for so long. I’m at the stage where the road starts to be less and less the focus of my attention, and instead I became more aware of the feeling of merely existing in this space. Soon I’d be floating. Then I would drift in and out of sleep. I’d dream about the road so I would never really know if I were in one or the other.”
“I’m smoking again. How many had this been? Too goddamn many anyhow. My throat and nostrils are burning. I’m so dry. I need some water or anything, but I can’t stop, despite the fact that the seat and I have become one. We are divided only by sweat.”
“I’ve tried to count the billboards advertising titty bars or redemption. If my calculations are correct Jesus is winning. What else have I seen? Well apparently I’d be a fool not to partake in the deals at tourist trap 295 a. I could have bought discount amusement park tickets more times than the number of miles I’ve traveled. I could have seen hundreds of historical sites. I have a far better understanding of what a deal is for a hotel room for a night. And most memorably, The John Birch Society thinks the U.S. should succeed from the UN. I half expected those backward idiots to still be bitching about the reds.”
“I’d nearly forgotten why I’d been driving so long, but that was the best thing I could imagine. I hadn’t pulled anything like this in over a year. It came in from Henry but Stanton wasn’t even around to clear it. I hadn’t heard a single word from that goddamn priest in weeks and I find myself right where I began. Everything I hated is right here in this car. Stanton had once said, ‘what great city was built on blood and bullets’ and that, ‘after the war there’d be more peace and prosperity than Jesus could have ever imagined.’ But you never stop feeling a war and there wasn’t a soul left in the city that wasn’t in all kinds of hell…” He swerved to the shoulder, his heart skipped a beat and he caught himself, “…It was a demon scuttling through the cities heart for years and years.”
“It wasn’t enough to plant the bomb. I had to drive all to hell to watch this poor bastard, Rosenbrook torch to a crisp until his lungs no longer carried the evidence against Jordan. Whatever the hell it was. Maybe he didn’t even deserve it. Who did anymore?”
Dylan followed a Range Rover closely but cautiously. It was night now, and a light rain had started to fall. He only noticed in the flash of passing headlights. It wasn’t late yet and there were still a moderate amount of other cars on the road. He always took it easy and averaged out at about 10 over the speed limit. Of course this was far slower than most did on the high way and currently a red ford truck was riding him hard. “Right asshole ride me a little tighter then we can share a smoke and you can forget to call me tomorrow.” He switched lanes to let the truck pass out of exasperation. As the truck passed the window the Ranger Rover, about 20 feet ahead now, erupted in a brilliant flash. The red truck slowed down and Dylan got back over. The Range Rover careened in and out of its lane just missing the truck. Smoke billowed out of its cracked windows. Dylan slowed down. The Range Rover smacked into the median wall. It skidded along for about 50 yards before it finally came to a halt shooting sparks into the droplets of rain. Some cars pulled over to help including the red truck. A man jumped out of the truck and ran to the aide of the rover but as he got less than five feet away, the rover erupted in a fireball. The metallic frame of the car twisted and buckled in the inferno. Many stood around watching entranced and motionless as rain dewed on their clothes and faces. The rain was lost to the fire of hell and fury. Passing cars slowed down to watch.
John moved on. He pulled off at the next exit. “I sweated it out at one of those grits and tits trucker trash holes right off the highway. I don’t know whether the food or the women were more disgusting, but hell it was probably the only thing open for 20 miles. More than anything I just wanted to stop driving.” He got back on the highway going north just after and hour and a half later. He could see the chaos of flashing lights and scurrying rescue vehicles about a half a mile a head. “This is it, now I can sleep tonight off for a week.” He got closer and closer to the crash site. He finally came up on it. He surveyed the disaster from his window. The Range Rover is little but a twisted and burned shell with smoke still billowing out and fading into the night’s sky. There is glass and car fragments scattered all about the road. Uniformed men dance about taking pictures and writing reports. There are three bodies under tarps in descending length. The rain has stopped.
“Jesus, he was supposed to be a lone. That son of a bitch Jordan said Rosenbrook would be alone…Jesus, oh Christ”
Last Rite
By
Stephen Jones
Part 1
The Devil Takes Care of His Own
Dylan sat on the edge of hotel bed. He held a 38. revolver in his lap. He looked down on it and the entire surrounding blurred except for the glimmer of a lamp reflecting on the gun’s barrel. “If only I had something do die for besides myself and my sins.” He slumped over on the bed, laid looking at the ceiling and lit up a smoke. He pulled him self further up the bed close enough to reach the nightstand. “Fuck.” He pulled the Gideon bible from the drawer. He held it above his chest. He burned it and all the judgment and meaning with it. The flame spread crumpling the pages and the hard leather cover. As he sensed the heat more and more intensely on his skin, he jumped up and ran to the bathroom and threw the burning book into the shower. He sat on the toilet. “Goddamn stop selling liquor at 9:30 pm. Fucking bible belt.” He jumped up again and went back into the room. He kicked the lamp hard and it went flying into the wall and the bulb smashed. There was an electric flash and the room went dark. He fell backward. He took the defeat to gravity in strides and smashed his hand in to the wall. “Brilliant! What did I do? What did I fucking do!” He laid on the ground finally accepting it all. The room was dimly lit by the burning ash of his never-ending cigarette and fogged in long hard drags. There was a knock on the door a few minutes later. “My first though is to tell this son of a bitch to go fuck himself on an iron rod but the cops need not be involved in any of this. I slipped him a hundred in humiliation. Though whatever I said was lost to his greedy gaze at my wad at cash. Hell I slipped him another hundred. My destruction was on Jordan.”
As Dylan drove he became aware of how bad his hand ached. He given himself a boxing fracture by punching the wall and the hand was swollen nearly twice it’s regular size. The knuckle of middle and ring finger on his left hand had been displaced. His head ached nearly as bad. He pulled off at an exit and got a bottle of aspirin from a gas station. He took three and got back on the road. The sun broke out in the horizon. He was tired from only a few hours of sleep in over 48 hours. He hoped that the sun would wake him up but it made him even more tired. He dragged on. The drive lasted even longer coming home. The side sides of the road blurred to his fierce fixation on the end of the trip. It rained on and off. He smoked furiously and went through a pack in only a few hours. His lungs felt like shit. His chest ached and he coughed hard, hacking up phlegm. He tried to think about something beside his hand but it throbbed.
Dylan pulled into his driveway just under 7 hours after he left the hotel that morning. He had moved to the suburbs a month before. The city made him sick. It had too many seeded little memoirs to the life he’d led. The life he now spurned with such dread and antipathy. His house was spacious but simple. It had a pool. He had made sure of that. He’d always loved the water. He turned off the car and went inside. He threw the keys on a small table next to the door, and put the revolver in a drawer in the table. He threw his jacket on a chair. He made his way across the living room to the kitchen. Once there he opened the freezer grabbed a handful of ice and put it in a small plastic bag he got from one of the counter drawers. He opened a sliding glass door in the back of the kitchen that led to the back porch. He sat in his favorite lawn chair by the edge of the pool. He lit up a smoke, reclined and but the bag of ice on his broken hand. “Christ,” blew out with a deep drag. It was a moment of full acceptance of what he’d seen hours before. It was a moment of self-guile spent in a cloud of smoke. The smoke billowed out from under the overhang and high into air. A salamander scuttled up a tree
Dylan fell asleep by the pool for a few hours. He woke with a stiff neck and his hand still throbbing. He took more aspirin. He took a shower, got dressed and got back in the car to head to the city. It was the beginning of fall and there were already leaves everywhere. It was cold and the air was crisp. Dylan’s house was just over half an hour from midtown.
Henry Jordan had moved in enterprise north, recently. He put as much distance as he could from the Confessional Room while still being close enough the maintain complete control. The war by all appearances had ended nearly two years before. No, crusading politicians had stood in opposition and there was relative harmony. Stanton had taken full control the cities, drug trade, prostitution, titty bars, gun running and any nefarious enterprise there was to be had. Though there had been a heavy cost of the war. There was a mass outrage of the murder of a priest, the cities Bishop and the burning down of St Judes church. In consequence, the police were pushed to crack down hard on crime in south town. While the police force was usually disaffected with south town and ineffectual in general, the pressure was too strong. They had picked the drug ring to focus on, to save face. They had even launched a public relations campaign that had promised retribution for the war and that linked the murder of three politicians and the two men of the laity to a struggle between rival factions to take the cities’ drug trade over. Of course, the dead politicians and priests had been martyrs for right and bestowed unofficially with sainthood. Jordan had become the intense focus of the dragnet on the drug trade. He had felt unbearable constraint for the two post war years. Stanton was untouchable. He was too powerful and nearly a phantom by then. Jordan had fostered fierce resentment in this time. The only operations he was able to maintain was the Confessional Room and Folsom Park, which was a park in the heart of south town that housed over a hundred wet brains. He was only able to maintain these operations through intensive bribing. Of course he had a network of dealers, but the cops were picking them up more and more frequently. The backbone of the network had been broken and it had been increasingly hard to get shipments in through raids. Jordan had found himself in a bad place and Stanton was nowhere to be found.
Dylan got to Jordan’s at dusk. The sky was orange and glowing. Jordan had set himself up above a lounge in midtown. It was a fairly legitimate place that hosted concerts often. There was a bar, a restaurant and good-sized stage. Jordan had an office above it. It was furnished in brown leather. He spent most of his time there. The bartender brought up Dylan. Jordan was starring out the window listlessly. It took a few minutes for him to break from his days and be cognizant of his guests’ presence. He turned and motioned for Dylan to sit. It instantly reminded Dylan of the numberless times he had sat across from Stanton just like this. Stanton was an apparition and every day Jordan got more brazen and closer to usurping the throne. “So, Dyl, how’d it go?” he asked.
“You haven’t heard yet?” asked Dylan.
“No, no I’ve been banging since you’ve been gone. We had a lot of shit to clean up. The goddamn vultures have been restless after that ‘searing expose’ about the room…Anyways, how’d you make out? ”
“Rosenbrook’s dead,” replied Dylan with a noticeable drop in his tone and countenance.
“Good, I knew you’d be fine, and you gave me all that hell for sending you out. I don’t even care about the money; you did me a real solid.” Dylan remained silent. Jordan noticed him holding his hand, and how swollen it was, “Listen, Dyl I know it was a shitty one, but it had to be done. I can’t trust things like that to kids I got working the street. Hell, I gotta kill one of them a week to keep the rest from skimming off the top.” Dylan cut in with renewed presence,” The man’s goddamn family was in the car, Henry! You told me he’d be alone,” he burst, jumping out of the chair.
“Jesus, kid, ease her back a notch. So, that was an unexpected twist. I didn’t know, but what’s the matter?”
“Fuck you Henry, I killed a goddamn kid and woman! Doesn’t that bother you one goddamn bit! I saw their burned bodies laying out in the fucking street! I’m not murdering fucking kids for you!” Dylan continued to scream, threw over the chair and pushed in on Jordan. Jordan jumped up to meet him, grabbed him, easily over powered him and pushed him up against the wall, “What the fuck kind of way is this to act you shit! You ain’t nothing but the priest’s little lackey. You’re goddamn lucky I took you on after he pulled his little disappearing act. Things are changing in this place. You best, keep the friends you got…” Dylan had been subdued and Jordan eased off of him, “…Now, I asked a favor and you did me well. You know you’ve always been in well with me. As for the bitch and the brat well, Rosenbrook was a worthless shit and I can’t imagine his offspring and whore wife being higher class. Don’t worry about little things. There’s a lot more at play here. You gotta find the priest, Dylan.” Dylan who had been silent through all this, now spoke, “I’m out of this Henry. Last night was it…I’m not…I’m not,” he started to babble incoherently. Jordan pushed him hard into the wall again, “You, find salvation on your own goddamn time. I don’t have the luxury of your bullshit…” He threw Dylan aside, “Get the hell out of here and find the priest!”
“I hadn’t seen the priest in weeks, nor had I put much effort into to looking. The stupid bastard had run for alderman in the last election. Jordan and everyone else told him how goddamn ignorant and prideful a choice the political campaign. Even all the money he’d accumulated post war and all the power he held from up on high or the deep fires of hell wasn’t enough for his sins and infamy to be washed clean. He’d never get a clean public image and he lost in the worst political defeat in the history of the city. Or at least that’s what the paper said, “That people of the city still had enough moral backbone to embarrass a ineptly vile and nihilistic sadist like Stanton.” Those were the words of Ryan Stark, a journalist who had prided himself on, “a merciless pursuit of exposing and eradicating the virus of violence and corruption as well as the epidemic of drug addiction.” He was the newest form of crusader that popped up. He’d either have a Pulitzer or be dead by the end of the year. Of course he was that same journalist who had just written that “searing expose,” on the Confessional Room, so my guess was dead.”
Dylan knew his best chance at finding Stanton, was up North. The priest had had, a cabin north of the city before his fall from the laity. He had talked about it several times to Dylan as he was prone to breaking off into tangents and rambling on for hours. After his defeat for public office and his succinct demonizing in the public eye, he had grown increasingly reclusive. He had also become more and more paranoid. He often talked to Dylan, about his fear of assassination. Ironically, it was his backing away that was opening the door for a coup. Dylan had tried to put more security on him, but the priest had quickly disregarded the idea. He didn’t trust any of the new kids coming up and most of the older ones were dead. Stanton had also grown increasingly disconnected when earlier that year, plans had gone in affect to rebuild Saint Judes. Stanton had become wildly irrational. He had left Dylan screaming incoherently, and disappeared for three days. On the third day the contractor in charge of the project’s house burned down with he and his family in it. Michael John’s cousin had taken care of it. In the end the scare tactics were ineffectual, the building of the church went on. Regardless, Michael was given most of midtown and the island, after Whit had launched his own bloody insurrection and had been put down. Now, Michael stood as Jordan’s only competition if anything happened to Stanton. Dylan knew it was only a matter of time.
Dylan drove north through the business district. He drove on, for nearly an hour to a secluded area in the country north of the city. It took him another half hour to find Stanton’s place. He had never been there but Stanton had described well and enough times for Dylan to be able to narrow it down. It was a place a good 100 feet of the road, and there were numerous trees on the lot. There was a long winding drive way. The house was brown, and compact. There was a screened in porch with a few chairs. The house and property looked generally unkempt and poorly cared for. The grass hadn’t been cut in months, and the paint on the house was cracked. Dylan hadn’t noticed before but there was a frost sitting on the ground. He parked the car near the house, went to the door and knocked. He waited for a minute, but there was no answer. He only had on one jacket, and he was damn cold. He looked around for a moment. There were no stirrings anywhere in sight. He went into the house. There was no heat running and no lights on. It was nearly completely dark outside. Dylan couldn’t see anything, and he rammed his leg into a table. “Shit, goddamnit!” he exerted with a cringe of pain. The front door had opened to a living room. There was a kitchen with a sliding glass door towards the back of the house. Dylan walked to it. The moon was shining down through the trees. There was a stillness and iridescent glow. The moon gave what little illumination there was in the house. He smelt smoke burning somewhere in the house. He followed the scent. It led to a door on the side of the house. Ho opened it. The room was nearly a replica of Stanton’s office. There were bookshelves and a big mahogany desk. A few candles on the window lidge dimly lighted the room. Stanton was sitting at the desk. He was slumped over smoking a cigar. His beard was thick and unruly, his skin was sickly sallow and he stank. Dylan felt an even stiffer chill as he entered the room. Stanton perked up, “Ah Dylan, my boy you found me. I was wondering when you’d come around.”
“Well, you use to go on about this place all the time. I wasn’t so hard to figure on,” Dylan’s fearful reverence of the man had nearly diminished entirely.
“Yes, well I knew you’d be along.”
“A lot of people are looking for you.”
“Yes, yes that is to be expected...” Dylan sat down in a chair in from of the desk. “I used to use this study to write sermons. There was always a calm and sanctity to this room,” the priest stood off in to nothingness and drifted in his mind. Before he could philosophize and meander more Dylan interjected, “How much longer do you think you can last out here? How much longer can you hold on to things? You haven’t even been in the damn city for weeks. Jordan is gunning for you. They’re going to come for you soon.” Stanton looked at him, “My boy death isn’t nearly as exclusive as we make it out to be. There are far worse fates a foot. You’ll understand one day…”There was a marked docility in his voice that Dylan had never heard before. This man was waiting to die. He had nothing but acceptance on his heart. There was little left in his consciousness but the wait. He continued on…”Doc Walker is back.” A deep evading shudder ran through Dylan’s viscera and showed heavy in his countenance.
Dylan left the cabin shortly after. There was nothing more to be said. He got back in his car and drove south. He wanted a drink. His hand and head were nothing short of violent throbbing. He drove back into the city. He pressed on and moved down in to south town. The place he had been born into and no matter how far he traveled always ended back at. By the time he got to the strip things were picking it up. Though the rest of the world had little conscious affect on him. He hit it hard and did three drinks a bar. By the time he’d gotten to the fourth bar he was finally starting to feel better about everything. He’d drank away the three burned bodies under those tarps on the side of the road. He ended the night with a bottle of whiskey. He half walked and half stumbled to walk to the island and the beach. It was freezing on the beach, but he was full of liquid warmth. He fell in the sand and took swigs mixed with long drags. There was that same calm and emptiness he remembered to vividly from when he was younger.
“Doc Walker…Doc Walker. That name was synonymous with such death and fear. I’d never met the man but his reputation was strong enough. However many exaggerations there was to his story, one thing was certain that he had more blood on his hands than any man in the history of this city. He had been involved with Stanton at the start. Stanton and Jordan conquered this city but Walker was their mechanism. To a man like that killing had no particular bemusement or spiritual blackening it was just like breathing. He was goddamn good at it too. He killed dozens of cops, addicts, rival gang leaders and god knows who else. Those were the worst days of this place. Walker reveled in it. Then he left as easily as he had brought the city to its knees. God’ knows why he’s back. Stanton failed to mention where he loyalties lay, or how he even knew. I could only imagine the worst. I started to doubt my own survival in it all. I don’t hardly care anymore. All I feel in the numbness. Shit, I can hardly stand. How the hell am I gonna get home? It feels like years since I’ve been to this beach. When the hell was I here last? …It was with John. I handed him over to Virgil here the night he killed Whit. It’s been months. The kid probably o.d. It’s my fault. I left him. He’s the only friend I have in this place and I left him. I wonder if he’s even alive…”
Dylan walked back to mainland. It took him a stumbling hour to get to the apartment district south of the strip. He went into one of the buildings. It made him sick to be in there as it always did. The place reeked of waste. It was where most of the lower level guys in Stanton and Jordan’s operations held up. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. He wondered if he was going to make it. He took in a hard suck of air with every breath. While the aches of his body and psyche were numbed, walking and stair climbing were a different story. He stopped at an apartment in the middle of the hall. He knocked but there was no answer. He pounded on the door, but there was still no answer. He looked up and down the hallway and there was nothing. He stepped back and kicked hard in to the door. In didn’t fully break open. He looked down the hall to see if anyone had come out. The hall was still empty. He thought to himself that a door breaking in was probably not a foreign sound to that hall. He kicked hard two more times in succession before door finally snapped. He moved into apartment. John was right where he had left him, on his sleazy mattress on the floor. John’s was looking at Dylan but his eyes were glazed over. He was as pale as his white mattress, his was covered in sweat and he was shaking. Dylan walked over to him and said, “I came with a white collar, and I’m cleaning you up.”
“I was already burning, a straight goddamn torch ready to spark out.” Dylan turned uncomfortably. He was nearly numb. He’d been driving for over 5 hours. His hand gripped the steering wheel tighter and harder than he realized. His right leg was stiff and throbbing. “I had made a habit the summer after I finished high school of walking to beach, during the early evening, to sit for hours and smoke cigarettes. Everything just felt clear and simple there. The only pain, the only torment there was trying to light a smoke in the wind. Well that and dealing with the realization that everyone else there was with someone, or had some purpose for being there. I was alone, and a little lost. Still there had never been and has never again been a moment as pure and as livable in my life as those moments I spent staring into the ocean. In that vastness was the only peace I’ve ever found. For some reason unknown to me it made sense, and even it was really nothing at all. Sometimes John came too. John…Saint John had caught the disease. I saw the sickness in him, and what little was left of my friend. I threw him to the goddamn dogs and I knew it. This is the kind of shit that hits you after 5 hours + of super highway. God, I’ve been driving for so long. I’m at the stage where the road starts to be less and less the focus of my attention, and instead I became more aware of the feeling of merely existing in this space. Soon I’d be floating. Then I would drift in and out of sleep. I’d dream about the road so I would never really know if I were in one or the other.”
“I’m smoking again. How many had this been? Too goddamn many anyhow. My throat and nostrils are burning. I’m so dry. I need some water or anything, but I can’t stop, despite the fact that the seat and I have become one. We are divided only by sweat.”
“I’ve tried to count the billboards advertising titty bars or redemption. If my calculations are correct Jesus is winning. What else have I seen? Well apparently I’d be a fool not to partake in the deals at tourist trap 295 a. I could have bought discount amusement park tickets more times than the number of miles I’ve traveled. I could have seen hundreds of historical sites. I have a far better understanding of what a deal is for a hotel room for a night. And most memorably, The John Birch Society thinks the U.S. should succeed from the UN. I half expected those backward idiots to still be bitching about the reds.”
“I’d nearly forgotten why I’d been driving so long, but that was the best thing I could imagine. I hadn’t pulled anything like this in over a year. It came in from Henry but Stanton wasn’t even around to clear it. I hadn’t heard a single word from that goddamn priest in weeks and I find myself right where I began. Everything I hated is right here in this car. Stanton had once said, ‘what great city was built on blood and bullets’ and that, ‘after the war there’d be more peace and prosperity than Jesus could have ever imagined.’ But you never stop feeling a war and there wasn’t a soul left in the city that wasn’t in all kinds of hell…” He swerved to the shoulder, his heart skipped a beat and he caught himself, “…It was a demon scuttling through the cities heart for years and years.”
“It wasn’t enough to plant the bomb. I had to drive all to hell to watch this poor bastard, Rosenbrook torch to a crisp until his lungs no longer carried the evidence against Jordan. Whatever the hell it was. Maybe he didn’t even deserve it. Who did anymore?”
Dylan followed a Range Rover closely but cautiously. It was night now, and a light rain had started to fall. He only noticed in the flash of passing headlights. It wasn’t late yet and there were still a moderate amount of other cars on the road. He always took it easy and averaged out at about 10 over the speed limit. Of course this was far slower than most did on the high way and currently a red ford truck was riding him hard. “Right asshole ride me a little tighter then we can share a smoke and you can forget to call me tomorrow.” He switched lanes to let the truck pass out of exasperation. As the truck passed the window the Ranger Rover, about 20 feet ahead now, erupted in a brilliant flash. The red truck slowed down and Dylan got back over. The Range Rover careened in and out of its lane just missing the truck. Smoke billowed out of its cracked windows. Dylan slowed down. The Range Rover smacked into the median wall. It skidded along for about 50 yards before it finally came to a halt shooting sparks into the droplets of rain. Some cars pulled over to help including the red truck. A man jumped out of the truck and ran to the aide of the rover but as he got less than five feet away, the rover erupted in a fireball. The metallic frame of the car twisted and buckled in the inferno. Many stood around watching entranced and motionless as rain dewed on their clothes and faces. The rain was lost to the fire of hell and fury. Passing cars slowed down to watch.
John moved on. He pulled off at the next exit. “I sweated it out at one of those grits and tits trucker trash holes right off the highway. I don’t know whether the food or the women were more disgusting, but hell it was probably the only thing open for 20 miles. More than anything I just wanted to stop driving.” He got back on the highway going north just after and hour and a half later. He could see the chaos of flashing lights and scurrying rescue vehicles about a half a mile a head. “This is it, now I can sleep tonight off for a week.” He got closer and closer to the crash site. He finally came up on it. He surveyed the disaster from his window. The Range Rover is little but a twisted and burned shell with smoke still billowing out and fading into the night’s sky. There is glass and car fragments scattered all about the road. Uniformed men dance about taking pictures and writing reports. There are three bodies under tarps in descending length. The rain has stopped.
“Jesus, he was supposed to be a lone. That son of a bitch Jordan said Rosenbrook would be alone…Jesus, oh Christ”
Last Rite
By
Stephen Jones
Part 1
The Devil Takes Care of His Own
Dylan sat on the edge of hotel bed. He held a 38. revolver in his lap. He looked down on it and the entire surrounding blurred except for the glimmer of a lamp reflecting on the gun’s barrel. “If only I had something do die for besides myself and my sins.” He slumped over on the bed, laid looking at the ceiling and lit up a smoke. He pulled him self further up the bed close enough to reach the nightstand. “Fuck.” He pulled the Gideon bible from the drawer. He held it above his chest. He burned it and all the judgment and meaning with it. The flame spread crumpling the pages and the hard leather cover. As he sensed the heat more and more intensely on his skin, he jumped up and ran to the bathroom and threw the burning book into the shower. He sat on the toilet. “Goddamn stop selling liquor at 9:30 pm. Fucking bible belt.” He jumped up again and went back into the room. He kicked the lamp hard and it went flying into the wall and the bulb smashed. There was an electric flash and the room went dark. He fell backward. He took the defeat to gravity in strides and smashed his hand in to the wall. “Brilliant! What did I do? What did I fucking do!” He laid on the ground finally accepting it all. The room was dimly lit by the burning ash of his never-ending cigarette and fogged in long hard drags. There was a knock on the door a few minutes later. “My first though is to tell this son of a bitch to go fuck himself on an iron rod but the cops need not be involved in any of this. I slipped him a hundred in humiliation. Though whatever I said was lost to his greedy gaze at my wad at cash. Hell I slipped him another hundred. My destruction was on Jordan.”
As Dylan drove he became aware of how bad his hand ached. He given himself a boxing fracture by punching the wall and the hand was swollen nearly twice it’s regular size. The knuckle of middle and ring finger on his left hand had been displaced. His head ached nearly as bad. He pulled off at an exit and got a bottle of aspirin from a gas station. He took three and got back on the road. The sun broke out in the horizon. He was tired from only a few hours of sleep in over 48 hours. He hoped that the sun would wake him up but it made him even more tired. He dragged on. The drive lasted even longer coming home. The side sides of the road blurred to his fierce fixation on the end of the trip. It rained on and off. He smoked furiously and went through a pack in only a few hours. His lungs felt like shit. His chest ached and he coughed hard, hacking up phlegm. He tried to think about something beside his hand but it throbbed.
Dylan pulled into his driveway just under 7 hours after he left the hotel that morning. He had moved to the suburbs a month before. The city made him sick. It had too many seeded little memoirs to the life he’d led. The life he now spurned with such dread and antipathy. His house was spacious but simple. It had a pool. He had made sure of that. He’d always loved the water. He turned off the car and went inside. He threw the keys on a small table next to the door, and put the revolver in a drawer in the table. He threw his jacket on a chair. He made his way across the living room to the kitchen. Once there he opened the freezer grabbed a handful of ice and put it in a small plastic bag he got from one of the counter drawers. He opened a sliding glass door in the back of the kitchen that led to the back porch. He sat in his favorite lawn chair by the edge of the pool. He lit up a smoke, reclined and but the bag of ice on his broken hand. “Christ,” blew out with a deep drag. It was a moment of full acceptance of what he’d seen hours before. It was a moment of self-guile spent in a cloud of smoke. The smoke billowed out from under the overhang and high into air. A salamander scuttled up a tree
Dylan fell asleep by the pool for a few hours. He woke with a stiff neck and his hand still throbbing. He took more aspirin. He took a shower, got dressed and got back in the car to head to the city. It was the beginning of fall and there were already leaves everywhere. It was cold and the air was crisp. Dylan’s house was just over half an hour from midtown.
Henry Jordan had moved in enterprise north, recently. He put as much distance as he could from the Confessional Room while still being close enough the maintain complete control. The war by all appearances had ended nearly two years before. No, crusading politicians had stood in opposition and there was relative harmony. Stanton had taken full control the cities, drug trade, prostitution, titty bars, gun running and any nefarious enterprise there was to be had. Though there had been a heavy cost of the war. There was a mass outrage of the murder of a priest, the cities Bishop and the burning down of St Judes church. In consequence, the police were pushed to crack down hard on crime in south town. While the police force was usually disaffected with south town and ineffectual in general, the pressure was too strong. They had picked the drug ring to focus on, to save face. They had even launched a public relations campaign that had promised retribution for the war and that linked the murder of three politicians and the two men of the laity to a struggle between rival factions to take the cities’ drug trade over. Of course, the dead politicians and priests had been martyrs for right and bestowed unofficially with sainthood. Jordan had become the intense focus of the dragnet on the drug trade. He had felt unbearable constraint for the two post war years. Stanton was untouchable. He was too powerful and nearly a phantom by then. Jordan had fostered fierce resentment in this time. The only operations he was able to maintain was the Confessional Room and Folsom Park, which was a park in the heart of south town that housed over a hundred wet brains. He was only able to maintain these operations through intensive bribing. Of course he had a network of dealers, but the cops were picking them up more and more frequently. The backbone of the network had been broken and it had been increasingly hard to get shipments in through raids. Jordan had found himself in a bad place and Stanton was nowhere to be found.
Dylan got to Jordan’s at dusk. The sky was orange and glowing. Jordan had set himself up above a lounge in midtown. It was a fairly legitimate place that hosted concerts often. There was a bar, a restaurant and good-sized stage. Jordan had an office above it. It was furnished in brown leather. He spent most of his time there. The bartender brought up Dylan. Jordan was starring out the window listlessly. It took a few minutes for him to break from his days and be cognizant of his guests’ presence. He turned and motioned for Dylan to sit. It instantly reminded Dylan of the numberless times he had sat across from Stanton just like this. Stanton was an apparition and every day Jordan got more brazen and closer to usurping the throne. “So, Dyl, how’d it go?” he asked.
“You haven’t heard yet?” asked Dylan.
“No, no I’ve been banging since you’ve been gone. We had a lot of shit to clean up. The goddamn vultures have been restless after that ‘searing expose’ about the room…Anyways, how’d you make out? ”
“Rosenbrook’s dead,” replied Dylan with a noticeable drop in his tone and countenance.
“Good, I knew you’d be fine, and you gave me all that hell for sending you out. I don’t even care about the money; you did me a real solid.” Dylan remained silent. Jordan noticed him holding his hand, and how swollen it was, “Listen, Dyl I know it was a shitty one, but it had to be done. I can’t trust things like that to kids I got working the street. Hell, I gotta kill one of them a week to keep the rest from skimming off the top.” Dylan cut in with renewed presence,” The man’s goddamn family was in the car, Henry! You told me he’d be alone,” he burst, jumping out of the chair.
“Jesus, kid, ease her back a notch. So, that was an unexpected twist. I didn’t know, but what’s the matter?”
“Fuck you Henry, I killed a goddamn kid and woman! Doesn’t that bother you one goddamn bit! I saw their burned bodies laying out in the fucking street! I’m not murdering fucking kids for you!” Dylan continued to scream, threw over the chair and pushed in on Jordan. Jordan jumped up to meet him, grabbed him, easily over powered him and pushed him up against the wall, “What the fuck kind of way is this to act you shit! You ain’t nothing but the priest’s little lackey. You’re goddamn lucky I took you on after he pulled his little disappearing act. Things are changing in this place. You best, keep the friends you got…” Dylan had been subdued and Jordan eased off of him, “…Now, I asked a favor and you did me well. You know you’ve always been in well with me. As for the bitch and the brat well, Rosenbrook was a worthless shit and I can’t imagine his offspring and whore wife being higher class. Don’t worry about little things. There’s a lot more at play here. You gotta find the priest, Dylan.” Dylan who had been silent through all this, now spoke, “I’m out of this Henry. Last night was it…I’m not…I’m not,” he started to babble incoherently. Jordan pushed him hard into the wall again, “You, find salvation on your own goddamn time. I don’t have the luxury of your bullshit…” He threw Dylan aside, “Get the hell out of here and find the priest!”
“I hadn’t seen the priest in weeks, nor had I put much effort into to looking. The stupid bastard had run for alderman in the last election. Jordan and everyone else told him how goddamn ignorant and prideful a choice the political campaign. Even all the money he’d accumulated post war and all the power he held from up on high or the deep fires of hell wasn’t enough for his sins and infamy to be washed clean. He’d never get a clean public image and he lost in the worst political defeat in the history of the city. Or at least that’s what the paper said, “That people of the city still had enough moral backbone to embarrass a ineptly vile and nihilistic sadist like Stanton.” Those were the words of Ryan Stark, a journalist who had prided himself on, “a merciless pursuit of exposing and eradicating the virus of violence and corruption as well as the epidemic of drug addiction.” He was the newest form of crusader that popped up. He’d either have a Pulitzer or be dead by the end of the year. Of course he was that same journalist who had just written that “searing expose,” on the Confessional Room, so my guess was dead.”
Dylan knew his best chance at finding Stanton, was up North. The priest had had, a cabin north of the city before his fall from the laity. He had talked about it several times to Dylan as he was prone to breaking off into tangents and rambling on for hours. After his defeat for public office and his succinct demonizing in the public eye, he had grown increasingly reclusive. He had also become more and more paranoid. He often talked to Dylan, about his fear of assassination. Ironically, it was his backing away that was opening the door for a coup. Dylan had tried to put more security on him, but the priest had quickly disregarded the idea. He didn’t trust any of the new kids coming up and most of the older ones were dead. Stanton had also grown increasingly disconnected when earlier that year, plans had gone in affect to rebuild Saint Judes. Stanton had become wildly irrational. He had left Dylan screaming incoherently, and disappeared for three days. On the third day the contractor in charge of the project’s house burned down with he and his family in it. Michael John’s cousin had taken care of it. In the end the scare tactics were ineffectual, the building of the church went on. Regardless, Michael was given most of midtown and the island, after Whit had launched his own bloody insurrection and had been put down. Now, Michael stood as Jordan’s only competition if anything happened to Stanton. Dylan knew it was only a matter of time.
Dylan drove north through the business district. He drove on, for nearly an hour to a secluded area in the country north of the city. It took him another half hour to find Stanton’s place. He had never been there but Stanton had described well and enough times for Dylan to be able to narrow it down. It was a place a good 100 feet of the road, and there were numerous trees on the lot. There was a long winding drive way. The house was brown, and compact. There was a screened in porch with a few chairs. The house and property looked generally unkempt and poorly cared for. The grass hadn’t been cut in months, and the paint on the house was cracked. Dylan hadn’t noticed before but there was a frost sitting on the ground. He parked the car near the house, went to the door and knocked. He waited for a minute, but there was no answer. He only had on one jacket, and he was damn cold. He looked around for a moment. There were no stirrings anywhere in sight. He went into the house. There was no heat running and no lights on. It was nearly completely dark outside. Dylan couldn’t see anything, and he rammed his leg into a table. “Shit, goddamnit!” he exerted with a cringe of pain. The front door had opened to a living room. There was a kitchen with a sliding glass door towards the back of the house. Dylan walked to it. The moon was shining down through the trees. There was a stillness and iridescent glow. The moon gave what little illumination there was in the house. He smelt smoke burning somewhere in the house. He followed the scent. It led to a door on the side of the house. Ho opened it. The room was nearly a replica of Stanton’s office. There were bookshelves and a big mahogany desk. A few candles on the window lidge dimly lighted the room. Stanton was sitting at the desk. He was slumped over smoking a cigar. His beard was thick and unruly, his skin was sickly sallow and he stank. Dylan felt an even stiffer chill as he entered the room. Stanton perked up, “Ah Dylan, my boy you found me. I was wondering when you’d come around.”
“Well, you use to go on about this place all the time. I wasn’t so hard to figure on,” Dylan’s fearful reverence of the man had nearly diminished entirely.
“Yes, well I knew you’d be along.”
“A lot of people are looking for you.”
“Yes, yes that is to be expected...” Dylan sat down in a chair in from of the desk. “I used to use this study to write sermons. There was always a calm and sanctity to this room,” the priest stood off in to nothingness and drifted in his mind. Before he could philosophize and meander more Dylan interjected, “How much longer do you think you can last out here? How much longer can you hold on to things? You haven’t even been in the damn city for weeks. Jordan is gunning for you. They’re going to come for you soon.” Stanton looked at him, “My boy death isn’t nearly as exclusive as we make it out to be. There are far worse fates a foot. You’ll understand one day…”There was a marked docility in his voice that Dylan had never heard before. This man was waiting to die. He had nothing but acceptance on his heart. There was little left in his consciousness but the wait. He continued on…”Doc Walker is back.” A deep evading shudder ran through Dylan’s viscera and showed heavy in his countenance.
Dylan left the cabin shortly after. There was nothing more to be said. He got back in his car and drove south. He wanted a drink. His hand and head were nothing short of violent throbbing. He drove back into the city. He pressed on and moved down in to south town. The place he had been born into and no matter how far he traveled always ended back at. By the time he got to the strip things were picking it up. Though the rest of the world had little conscious affect on him. He hit it hard and did three drinks a bar. By the time he’d gotten to the fourth bar he was finally starting to feel better about everything. He’d drank away the three burned bodies under those tarps on the side of the road. He ended the night with a bottle of whiskey. He half walked and half stumbled to walk to the island and the beach. It was freezing on the beach, but he was full of liquid warmth. He fell in the sand and took swigs mixed with long drags. There was that same calm and emptiness he remembered to vividly from when he was younger.
“Doc Walker…Doc Walker. That name was synonymous with such death and fear. I’d never met the man but his reputation was strong enough. However many exaggerations there was to his story, one thing was certain that he had more blood on his hands than any man in the history of this city. He had been involved with Stanton at the start. Stanton and Jordan conquered this city but Walker was their mechanism. To a man like that killing had no particular bemusement or spiritual blackening it was just like breathing. He was goddamn good at it too. He killed dozens of cops, addicts, rival gang leaders and god knows who else. Those were the worst days of this place. Walker reveled in it. Then he left as easily as he had brought the city to its knees. God’ knows why he’s back. Stanton failed to mention where he loyalties lay, or how he even knew. I could only imagine the worst. I started to doubt my own survival in it all. I don’t hardly care anymore. All I feel in the numbness. Shit, I can hardly stand. How the hell am I gonna get home? It feels like years since I’ve been to this beach. When the hell was I here last? …It was with John. I handed him over to Virgil here the night he killed Whit. It’s been months. The kid probably o.d. It’s my fault. I left him. He’s the only friend I have in this place and I left him. I wonder if he’s even alive…”
Dylan walked back to mainland. It took him a stumbling hour to get to the apartment district south of the strip. He went into one of the buildings. It made him sick to be in there as it always did. The place reeked of waste. It was where most of the lower level guys in Stanton and Jordan’s operations held up. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. He wondered if he was going to make it. He took in a hard suck of air with every breath. While the aches of his body and psyche were numbed, walking and stair climbing were a different story. He stopped at an apartment in the middle of the hall. He knocked but there was no answer. He pounded on the door, but there was still no answer. He looked up and down the hallway and there was nothing. He stepped back and kicked hard in to the door. In didn’t fully break open. He looked down the hall to see if anyone had come out. The hall was still empty. He thought to himself that a door breaking in was probably not a foreign sound to that hall. He kicked hard two more times in succession before door finally snapped. He moved into apartment. John was right where he had left him, on his sleazy mattress on the floor. John’s was looking at Dylan but his eyes were glazed over. He was as pale as his white mattress, his was covered in sweat and he was shaking. Dylan walked over to him and said, “I came with a white collar, and I’m cleaning you up.”