The Weirdness(69)
“I don’t want to be different,” Billy says, but Lucifer ignores this, throwing Billy the garment bag.
Billy unzips the bag. Inside is a single-piece jumpsuit, high-visibility orange. Billy half expects to turn it over and see PROPERTY OF HELL stenciled on the back.
“I’m not wearing this,” he says, pulling his bedsheet tighter around him.
Lucifer gives Billy a beseeching look, holds it for a good five seconds while Billy watches it impassively. Eventually he drops it.
“Jørgen’s van is parked in Lower Manhattan,” Lucifer says.
“I’m going to take you to the van, and you will drive to Ollard’s tower, go into the tower, and do what is expected of you. By doing so, you will save the world. Are we understood?”
“Absolutely not,” Billy says.
“Remember, Billy. You no longer have a choice.” He raises his hand and snaps his fingers, only instead of the old-timey flashbulb noise there is instead a noise like a peal of thunder, followed by a sharp feedbacking whine that causes everyone except Lucifer to clap their hands over their ears.
“How odd,” Lucifer says, when the whine has subsided. An expression of concern crosses his face. “Normally that—goes differently.”
He leans out into the hallway.
There is the sound of automatic weapons fire.
Lucifer is blown back into the room; blood gouts from his chest and from a wound in his throat. A great wet plum-colored stain spreads across the tattered front of the tuxedo shirt. Billy, Jørgen, and Elisa all leap away, horrified. Lucifer stumbles backward, gets tripped up by the desk chair and goes crashing down. Someone screams. Billy realizes that it’s him.
Lucifer clamps a hand over the breached artery in his neck, and struggles to speak.
“Ultimately,” he says, “should someone choose to write my story, I hope that author will take the time to mention that my entire existence really was characterized by my being profoundly, uniquely misunderstood.” This descends into a jag of morbid coughing; blood surges from his mouth in three great waves and then he’s still.
Standing in the doorway are two bearded commando-looking dudes, dressed in gray fatigues webbed with meshes of black nylon, holding stubby automatic weapons at their waists. The older one—his beard almost entirely gray—enters the room and prods Lucifer with his boot. The guys smells like hot machine oil and pipe tobacco, a particular type of sweet Virginia tobacco that hits Billy square in the sensorium and unlocks, of all things, a strong memory of childhood. It’s the smell of home.
And that’s finally the thing that allows Billy to recognize the bearded commando, allows him to realize that he knows him quite well, has in fact known him for his entire life, even though he never expected to see him in this kind of outfit, or in this kind of context.
“Dad?” Billy blurts.
“Put your clothes on, son,” says Keith Ridgeway, Billy’s father. “We’re getting out of here.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
BACK TO WORK
CIRCUMSTANCES • ADOLESCENT FEELINGS • GEOMETRY • RELEASING THE CLUTCH • LIFE IN WISCONSIN • BATSHIT INSANITY • FINALLY YOU GET TO FULL STOP • CHINESE FOOD VS. THE VOID • CAN I GET AN AMEN? • A FACT ABOUT OCEANS
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Billy says, looking into the face of his father. “You’re not—I mean are you really—?” He’s suffering a surge of astonishment at seeing his father here, standing over the bullet-riddled corpse of the Devil himself, and he can’t quite shape it into the form of a question. Just the sight of his bookish father holding a gun: just that alone is a shock to his system.
“Billy,” Keith says. He takes a pair of his familiar technocratish glasses out of a Velcro pouch lashed up under his armpit, rubs them with the hem of his combat jacket, and dons them. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
“I’m not all right,” Billy says. He feels a little truculent, saying it, ’cause clearly his dad is here to rescue him, and maybe this is the part where he can begin to relax, just lie back and be shunted to safety, but right now all Billy can think is that he has been lied to his entire life, and that kind of crowds out any major feelings of gratitude that he might otherwise be enjoying.
“I understand,” Keith says. His eyes, magnified by the wide lenses of his glasses, look sad, although Billy finds himself doubting the sentiment. “I am sure some of the occurrences of the last week have been—disorienting.” And then the sadness gives way to intensity, a completely unfamiliar blast of goddamn derring-do or something, and he turns to look at the other commando, a tall, thin man with a West African cast to his features. “Jean,” he barks, “get me a reading on these three.”