Everyone Dies in the End #77

Susan

Down the block, on the right, behind a gutted 7-11, Susan hid the Indian. She parked it next to a heap of wooden pallets, and spread plastic bags, stuffed with trash, on it. If you stood next to it, the motorcycle looked like a beautiful Indian parked next to a bunch of pallets and covered with trash bags, but from ten feet away she doubted anyone would notice it. She struck out for the church, the .38 heavy on her hip.

The crowd had thinned, only a few stragglers still filed into the entrance, but the guards checked each. There was no way she was walking in with the .38, but there was no way she was going in without it. There had to be another entrance.

Crossing to the church side of the street, she kept her eyes on the cathedral steps. Ahead a woman shrieked and a man laughed coarsely. Lights, which dangled from the arches, illuminated the armed men and the denizens they searched. Both guards had a bottle of something in their hand, and frequently drank from said bottle. Judging from the rough way they handled their searches, the extra time they spent with the women, and their general inattentiveness to anything but their immediate surroundings, she guessed the bottles weren’t Diet Coke. She also guessed if these guards drank on duty, some, if not most, of the others did also. That was good news.

A series of houses occupied the lots adjacent to the cathedral—large, unlit structures with fenceless yards. Just what she needed. She ducked behind a hedge of the home adjacent to the cathedral and worked her way into the back yard. Judging by the lack of interior lights, the house was unoccupied, or if it was, the occupants weren’t in.

A tall, evergreen hedge stood between the back yard and the cathedral, blocking her view of the massive church, but that was okay. If she couldn’t see the church, no one in the church could see her. Shadows clung to the corners of the yard. On the other side of the hedge she could hear the muted voices of the church-going stragglers, and the church-protecting guards. A stone path led to an opening in the hedge at the back of the yard. Two stout wooden posts and an equally stout gate guarded the entrance.

Susan pressed an eye to a crack in the gate’s planking. A tiny alley, big enough for garbage collection, ran behind the house. Across the alley was another gated house. She could see nothing else. She could hear nothing else. Carefully she stepped through the gate.

To her left rose the cathedral’s side. Jutting from, and attached to, the side was a large house—the rectory. Light spilled from several windows onto the grass that lead to the structure. Susan crouched beside a pair of dented trashcans and watched the windows. She waited three, perhaps four minutes, and saw nothing. If there were people in there, they weren’t moving. At the back of the rectory a short set of concrete stairs lead to a small landing and the rear entrance. A door light illuminated the landing. On the landing a guard sat, his chair leaned back against the rectory wall, a cigarette in his lips.

Susan crept. Slowly, surely, each step confident and final. She avoided the window’s spilling light, and noiselessly gained the wall. Back to the wall, she slid toward the guard. Still he leaned, relaxed, smoking his cigarette, his last cigarette. Questions snapped through her mind like pictures through a projector. This man, this guard, had done nothing to her. Killing him would make her a murderer. No better than the Mother in Henry, Virginia, no better than the men at the roadblock. But those thoughts would do her no good. Better to think of how to kill this man, not the moral repercussions. She holstered the .38. Firing the gun would only bring more guards. Best to keep quiet till I know where I’m going; till I know what I’m doing.   

Susan leaned to her right, careful to keep her back against the wall, and slid her hand down her leg. She pulled the Mother’s butcher knife from the boot. The pale moon gleamed like fresh blood on the blade. One step, two, and she was behind the smoking guard. He remained oblivious. He sat above her, the chair resting on the raised landing.

It was easy.

A quick lunge and the blade slid into his neck. She pulled knife and he toppled off the landing, falling at her feet, staring up, eyes wide with terror. Another slice across the base of his throat and those wide eyes closed. 

She waited a moment, listening hard, swallowing the bile in her throat. No one came running. Susan wiped the blade on the guard’s shirt—one side and then the other. No sense putting the blood on her clothes, it would dry to a nauseating stench.  

Up the steps, ducking to the side of the door, once again listening.

Nothing.

           And then she was inside, and it was nothing like she expected.