Overcome All Darkness.”
Aubrey was eighty years old and had a baby face: an eighty-year-old baby face, but nevertheless pink and plump and pinchable. Even in the deep shade of his anticancer headgear, his blue eyes twinkled with merriment.
“Of all the cops I know,” said Aubrey, “here are the two I like the best.”
“Do you like any others at all?” Carson asked.
“Not one of the bastards, no,” Aubrey said. “But then none of the rest ever saved my life.”
“What’s with the stupid hat?” Michael asked.
Aubrey’s smile became a grimace. “What’s it matter if I die of skin cancer? I’m eighty years old. I gotta die of something.”
“Lulana doesn’t want you to die before you find Jesus.”
Aubrey sighed. “With those three running the show, I trip over Jesus every time I turn around.”
“If anyone can redeem you,” Carson said, “it’ll be Lulana.”
Aubrey looked as if he would say something acerbic. Instead he sighed again. “I never used to have a conscience. Now I do. It’s more annoying than this absurd hat.”
“Why wear the hat if you hate it?” Michael asked.
Aubrey glanced toward the house. “If I take it off, she’ll see. Then I won’t get any of Evangeline’s pie.”
“The praline-cinnamon cream pie.”
“With fried-pecan topping,” Aubrey said. “I love that pie.” He sighed.
“You sigh a lot these days,” Michael said.
“I’ve become pathetic, haven’t I?”
“You used to be pathetic,” Carson said. “What you’ve become is a little bit human.”
“It’s disconcerting,” Michael said.
“Don’t I know,” Aubrey agreed. “So what brings you guys here?”
Carson said, “We need some big, loud, door-busting guns.”
CHAPTER 16
GLORIOUS, THE STINK : pungent, pervasive, penetrating.
Nick Frigg imagined that the smell of the pits had saturated his flesh, his blood, his bones, in the same way that the scent of smoldering hickory permeated even the thickest cuts of meat in a smokehouse.
He relished the thought that to the core he smelled like all varieties of decomposition, like the death that he longed for and that he could not have.
In his thigh-high rubber boots, Nick strode across the west pit, empty cans of everything rattling in his wake, empty egg cartons and cracker boxes crunching-crackling underfoot, toward the spot where the surface of the trash had swelled and rolled and settled. That peculiar activity appeared to have ceased.
Although compacted by the wide-tracked garbage galleons that crawled these desolate realms, the trash field—between sixty and seventy feet deep in this pit—occasionally shifted under Nick, for by its nature it was riddled with small voids. Agile, with lightning reflexes, he rarely lost his footing.
When he arrived at the site of the movement that he had seen from the elevated rampart, the surface did not look significantly different from the hundred fifty feet of refuse across which he had just traveled. Squashed cans, broken glass, uncountable plastic items from bleach bottles to broken toys, drifts of moldering landscape trimmings—palm fronds, tree limbs, grass—full trash bags knotted at their necks…
He saw a doll with tangled legs and a cracked brow. Pretending that beneath his foot lay a real child of the Old Race, Nick stomped until he shattered the smiling face.
Turning slowly 360 degrees, he studied the debris more closely.
He sniffed, sniffed, using his genetically enhanced sense of smell to seek a clue as to what might have caused the unusual rolling movement in this sea of trash. Methane escaped the depths of the pit, but that scent seemed no more intense than usual.
Rats. He smelled rats nearby. In a dump, this was no more surprising than catching a whiff of garbage. The musky scent of rodents pervaded the entire fenced grounds of Crosswoods Waste Management.
He detected clusters of those whiskered individuals all around him, but he could not smell a pack so large
Aubrey was eighty years old and had a baby face: an eighty-year-old baby face, but nevertheless pink and plump and pinchable. Even in the deep shade of his anticancer headgear, his blue eyes twinkled with merriment.
“Of all the cops I know,” said Aubrey, “here are the two I like the best.”
“Do you like any others at all?” Carson asked.
“Not one of the bastards, no,” Aubrey said. “But then none of the rest ever saved my life.”
“What’s with the stupid hat?” Michael asked.
Aubrey’s smile became a grimace. “What’s it matter if I die of skin cancer? I’m eighty years old. I gotta die of something.”
“Lulana doesn’t want you to die before you find Jesus.”
Aubrey sighed. “With those three running the show, I trip over Jesus every time I turn around.”
“If anyone can redeem you,” Carson said, “it’ll be Lulana.”
Aubrey looked as if he would say something acerbic. Instead he sighed again. “I never used to have a conscience. Now I do. It’s more annoying than this absurd hat.”
“Why wear the hat if you hate it?” Michael asked.
Aubrey glanced toward the house. “If I take it off, she’ll see. Then I won’t get any of Evangeline’s pie.”
“The praline-cinnamon cream pie.”
“With fried-pecan topping,” Aubrey said. “I love that pie.” He sighed.
“You sigh a lot these days,” Michael said.
“I’ve become pathetic, haven’t I?”
“You used to be pathetic,” Carson said. “What you’ve become is a little bit human.”
“It’s disconcerting,” Michael said.
“Don’t I know,” Aubrey agreed. “So what brings you guys here?”
Carson said, “We need some big, loud, door-busting guns.”
CHAPTER 16
GLORIOUS, THE STINK : pungent, pervasive, penetrating.
Nick Frigg imagined that the smell of the pits had saturated his flesh, his blood, his bones, in the same way that the scent of smoldering hickory permeated even the thickest cuts of meat in a smokehouse.
He relished the thought that to the core he smelled like all varieties of decomposition, like the death that he longed for and that he could not have.
In his thigh-high rubber boots, Nick strode across the west pit, empty cans of everything rattling in his wake, empty egg cartons and cracker boxes crunching-crackling underfoot, toward the spot where the surface of the trash had swelled and rolled and settled. That peculiar activity appeared to have ceased.
Although compacted by the wide-tracked garbage galleons that crawled these desolate realms, the trash field—between sixty and seventy feet deep in this pit—occasionally shifted under Nick, for by its nature it was riddled with small voids. Agile, with lightning reflexes, he rarely lost his footing.
When he arrived at the site of the movement that he had seen from the elevated rampart, the surface did not look significantly different from the hundred fifty feet of refuse across which he had just traveled. Squashed cans, broken glass, uncountable plastic items from bleach bottles to broken toys, drifts of moldering landscape trimmings—palm fronds, tree limbs, grass—full trash bags knotted at their necks…
He saw a doll with tangled legs and a cracked brow. Pretending that beneath his foot lay a real child of the Old Race, Nick stomped until he shattered the smiling face.
Turning slowly 360 degrees, he studied the debris more closely.
He sniffed, sniffed, using his genetically enhanced sense of smell to seek a clue as to what might have caused the unusual rolling movement in this sea of trash. Methane escaped the depths of the pit, but that scent seemed no more intense than usual.
Rats. He smelled rats nearby. In a dump, this was no more surprising than catching a whiff of garbage. The musky scent of rodents pervaded the entire fenced grounds of Crosswoods Waste Management.
He detected clusters of those whiskered individuals all around him, but he could not smell a pack so large
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