Pilate Read online

  Juan turned on heel and ran down the stairs to the basement. Mary watched him leave. A big stab of panic grabbed Mary by the throat. She went to the kitchen, searching for a weapon, found a sharp knife as long as her forearm.

  It was quiet. Mary crept over to the basement stairs, trying to keep her breathing hushed. She was getting really frightened now.

  Mary pensively called out Juan’s name and heard a wicked banging noise, scared the shit out of her. Then the door to the outside viciously splintered and cracked. She heard Juan shout amongst the cascading violence.

  Mary turned to run, but she had nowhere to go.

  CHAPTER 8

  T acitus left the Throne Room, walked slowly down a long hallway. He passed guard after guard. He tapped two on the shoulder. They followed Tacitus without a word.

  All the police were completely loyal. They

  would continue to intimidate, hurt, rob and kill for

  him as long as they kept getting paid. If you want

  loyalty, be prepared to shell out for it.

  The former police made his way to the hole

  where Juan de Bautista was kept.

  Tacitus was thinking hard. He had been

  Herod’s Second in Command for half a dozen years

  now. He had executed the former holder of this position. In that time, Tacitus put money away, but

  with no serious intent. He counted his position with

  Herod’s organization as security. Enjoying all the filth and sin The Harbor could offer. You had to have clout and stones to take it, however. Tacitus

  had plenty of both.

  Tacitus did a lot of dirt to move up ranks to

  stand beside the Mayor. He thought he had arrived.

  He could have anything his wicked heart desired.

  He’d tasted it all.

  Tacitus wasn’t searching any deeper than pleasing his senses and keeping his station. Just doing

  that had an obligatory body count and now the

  status quo was changing and rapidly. More bodies

  were going to pile up on him before this latest round

  of shit is through.

  Looking back, Tacitus realized it began unraveling a year ago. It coincided with the arrival of

  Herod’s first vision. He recalled the Mayor taking

  him into confidence. Herod told Tacitus of the

  nightmarish visions of apocalyptic slaughter he was

  having. Herod soon after fell into madness and

  Tacitus started stealing.

  Herod’s Second took big risks stealing from the

  megalomaniac. He’d personally witnessed plenty

  of torture by Herod through the years to make him

  think twice. But Tacitus could not resume his present lifestyle in some new locale with less than a

  million dollars. And if Herod’s crazy ass was going

  to go down in flames, the motherfucker could go it

  alone. Tacitus would cut and run, fuck loyalty.

  You get what you pay for.

  When Bautista gave up the coded locations,

  Tacitus knew Herod would put him in charge of retrieving Pilate’s money. One half of the first million Tacitus duct –taped to his torso.

  He now had his million, plus enough to chill

  abroad for a few months without dipping. Tacitus

  had his eye on stealing some more, would snatch it

  if he could. He kept it all in a twenty-eight year old

  coupe that was equal parts primer and rust. But the

  engine was new and fast. Along with pre-packed

  bags and weaponry in the trunk, the money patiently waited. Judging how quickly Herod was

  mentally decompensating, he might have to scamper any day now.

  Tacitus and the guards arrived at Bautista’s

  holding cell. One unlocked the heavy, solid door.

  Light spilled on the prisoner’s twisted wreck of a

  body. Tacitus turned to a guard standing by the cell

  door.

  “Fetch me a stick,” he ordered, “A big one.” A thick rectangle of bright light flooded the dark

  space. It lay as a sheet over Juan’s body. He heard

  voices, hoped he was already dead. He tried to move

  and could not. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. They took hold of him and dragged Juan out of

  his cell. He didn’t need to ask what they wanted

  this time. Juan de Bautista knew.

  CHAPTER 9

  I mmanuel was in prayer when the image of her cousin came. She saw what they did, how they broke his bones, desecrated his flesh. She opened

  her eyes, turned to Pedro sitting nearby.

  “What is it, Teacher?” he asked.

  “It’s Juan,” she replied. A single tear tracked its

  way down her face. “He’s gone, they killed him.” Pedro didn’t know what to say. Heavy silence filled the room. They both looked at each other. Pedro was confused, had questions, but kept quiet. He knew his Savior well enough to know when to leave shit be.

  Immanuel’s face betrayed the pain she felt. She indulged the pity and sorrow for a few moments more and then seemed to resign herself. Pedro watched her, feeling himself a major shift occurring. It felt like something big was coming, something vile and ravenous. He was getting fearful, when she arose and came to him. She was quiet some more, just standing and staring into space. He could feel her concern through the silence.

  Finally, she spoke.

  “It has begun.”

  1850, anno Domini The darkness was deep and complete. Only the vampire could see through it. Huge contained fires kept the California winter at bay for the miners of the Great Gold Rush.

  The vampire peered out over the expanse of miner’s tents, saloons and brothels. They were stretched out before him like iant game board tiles. His teeth lengthened and sharpened. Yellow eyes missed nothing. Talons split fingertips. He was ready for more blood.

  He had been feeding on miners and whores for weeks, been feeding well.

  It was two in the morning. The rough drunkenness was winding down. The vampire wanted to feed one more time before ending the night. He was thinking possibly his time here. The vampire had a sensation of personal danger, couldn’t shake it.

  The vampire came to the main thoroughfare. He rested beside a water trough, free of horses, and listened to the night. All sounds he could place. He rose to move, caught sight of the wooden church. When completed, it will be by far the most impressive building around. The vampire looked skyward. He saw the peak of the steeple, where a cross silhouetted itself against the moon-brightened night sky. His hands began to burn. He dunked them quick in the water trough, dried them on his coarse broadcloth pants. The sensation departed and he was still hungry.

  The vampire moved out, staying contained in the shadows. He darted furtively from dark spot to dark spot. He never let mortals see even a hint of him.

  The brothel was arrived at. He paused beside the rare clapboard structure. High false-front dwarfed the tents and lean-tos, surrounded it on all sides.

  The vampire, using exposed talons, fluently scaled the walls. The top floor, whores plied their trade. He entered a window in a low, lamp-lit room. A miner gustily getting his dollar’s worth. The vampire considered the two, both dismissed. They’re not on the menu this evening. It is too disruptive to attack more than one for food.

  The vampire darted toward the door, opened it and closed it behind him. So silent was he, the miner’s plunging ass missed not a bob. The pair remained oblivious to the predator.

  In the hallway, no one in sight, vampire sniffed the air. Sorting through sweat, dirt, stale tobacco and soured secretions to detect presence of oxygenated blood.

  The heady scent curled its finger at the vampire. He followed it down a narrow corridor to a closed door. He tested the handle of the scarred wooden door. It rotated freely. He pushed it open, went inside. A woman on
the bed and she was nude. Her restrained wrists, ankles chained to metal eyelets screwed into wall and floorboards. Her legs were spread wide. Her menstruation leaked from her bushy vagina.

  The whore was semi-conscious from opium smoke that still lingered in the room. The vampire was on her in an instant. Her muffled protest was weak. He punctured her carotid artery for a fast drain. The bright pressurized blood’s a powerful tsunami as he chugged it down his throat.

  A random thought occurred to the vampire as he swallowed gulp after gulp: as good as the blood was; it did not have the oxygen content he had smelled down the hall. Not even with her mense, which was rich gravy to him, luscious and tasty, but devoid of nutritional content.

  The muffled moan coming from the whore didn’t sound right either and why was she tied up?

  The vampire removed his bite from her neck and pulled down on the whore’s chin. He saw wadded up cloth in her mouth. Shoved far down her throat, in case she needed to scream.

  The next instant, a closet door burst open, a human in miner’s garb and sheriff’s badge came out shooting.

  Both barrels of the shotgun cried out. The blast hit the vampire full in the chest. It knocked him off his feet and through the air. Instinct and lust for survival had the vampire off his back and crouched. His right hand was flat on the floor in front of him, a cat ready to spring.

  Sheriff broke open the shotgun, fervently thumbed in more shells. He brought the shotgun together with a snap. The vampire pushed from balls of feet and flat of hand. He shot straight up, breaking through water-stained ceiling as the second pair of shots fired. The sheriff gazed through hole in ceiling the vampire made. Great drops of cool blood fell from the ragged hole. Blood hissed when drops pasted the hot barrel of the smoking shotgun.

  The sheriff could hear footsteps on the rooftop. He glanced at the dead whore, a convicted murderess and unwilling accomplice. What she stared at, no one else could see.

  The vampire crouched on the roof of the brothel. Sheltered by the false front, he tried to hold himself together. A great deal of his precious blood had been lost and his strength with it. He needed to find a dark hole to crawl into so he could hide and heal.

  He glanced around, realized immediately he was worse off than he thought. There were more miners waiting for him. It was to be an ambush, plain and simple. The vampire heard rifles being made ready to fire. All weapons were pointing at him. The miners had smiles painted on their rough-hewn faces.

  A moment of silence…

  More than twenty bullets slammed the vampire against coarse planking of the false front. He began to breathe truly hard as more blood and the oxygen it carried gushed forth.

  The moonlight glinted off the head of an axe. It swooped through the cold, still air and buried itself in the planking behind the vampire. It separated head from body.

  The vampire had just enough time to see his decapitated body. Right before the life winked out of him.

  * * * Judas was excited. He had secured appointment with the Pharisees. He had every intention of making a good impression. Judas was nervous, it had to be just so.

  Judas put on the business suit tailored for him. It fit like a dream. The only suit he owned. The most expensive thing he owned. Judas didn’t own much.

  He smiled. He thought how Immanuel would not approve. She would say that it distracted from the message. It lacked suitable humility, or some such shit.

  “Well, fuck her,” he said aloud to the empty apartment. “There’s no future in being a martyr, anyway.”

  Judas gave the knot of his tie one more pinch, made sure the pucker looked right. His appointment with the Pharisees should prove profitable. Judging from yesterday the Pharisees agree El Cristo is a threat to their business. It wasn’t just Pilate having trouble with depleting customer base. You take all the fractured spokes together the Pharisees have one big broke wheel. Their widget was losing its hold on the masses. But if the Christ goes, Plata will flow free once more. The dope fiends will jump right back on their titty; seeking comfort Immanuel will no longer provide. Hell, Judas thought he might call his inaugural batch of Plata ‘Lamb of God’ in memory of her. Immanuel’s followers can whine and complain to it instead, have the Plata answer all their feeble prayers.

  He’d turn on that holier-than-thou Pedro first, get him nice and strung out. He would love to see that mighty ass fall all over himself, once Judas got the nigga re-hooked. Maybe send the big fucker out after any Christians that were left. Let him wreak drug-fueled mayhem with Judas in charge of the onslaught. All while Judas got himself rich beyond imagining.

  He absolutely must convince the Pharisees to take him in. He just had to. The profit margin’s incredible with this drug. Judas did his homework:

  Hydromorphone-methamphetamine hydrochloride as a street drug was an accident. It began with lab scientists trying to develop pharmaceuticals that can deal with the intense pain certain metastatic carcinomas caused. The medical community reported these cancer patients gleaned only scant relief from traditional painkillers. Mostly due to how long it took for even the big guns to begin effectiveness. Accidental overdoses were becoming commonplace. Chasing pain until it finally hit the patient, hours later, in one big accumulative haymaking roundhouse donkey punch. Being soaked with all those powerful analgesics would give patients either a multi-day comatose state if lucky or an early trip to the big cold room if not.

  Scientists decided to formulate a Schedule II pharmaceutical that used a strong, synthetic heroin derivative. Add the methamphetamine component to speed up the initial painkilling response. It’s sort of a big mean biker brother to the over-the-counter headache formulas that use caffeine to enhance its efficacy.

  And goddamned did the new painkiller work. There were side-effects to the new Duradilauderal: Cotton mouth, heart palpitations, nervousness, insomnia, hypertension, blurred vision, vomiting, abdominal cramps, anorexia, altered libido, clouded sensorium, seizures, respiratory depression, really fun bouts of constipation, and the ever popular physical dependence. But none of that shit mattered. Patients finally got the relief they needed and the human race another drug to abuse.

  Judas liked most: Plata can be consumed in a variety of forms without changing the physical structure of the drug itself. It could follow an aficionado’s well trodden path of first snuffling up lines. Next a user would turn to abuser and smoke it sprinkled over a metal mesh and heated in a glass pipe. Finally, they will earn full rank as fiend by banging syringefulls of Plata daily. All while maintaining the same drug and dealer. Repeat customers, being the name of the game.

  Convenient, Judas thought, all the way around. He checked his gums. Made dreadfully sure the fangs were tucked up. He should be fine because he had recently fed. As long as he didn’t get overly stressed or feel endangered, Judas believed his vampirism could remain hidden.

  Judas didn’t want anyone to know he’s a vampire. He tried to hide it his whole life. If people knew, his edge would erase. It’s the same reason why Judas didn’t let on that seizures plagued him the past year.

  The seizures caused Judas to experience a frightening vision. A vision of betrayal, guilt and remorse while in the throes of a big one. His eyes rolled back into skull, lips chewed to shreds by fangs. A vision of hanging from a dead tree as the dogs came:

  The arrogant bastards tossed the bag at his sandaled feet. He stooped to pick it up. Not a great sum but anyone’s standard, but enough. It was more than enough for the treasurer to mislay his own soul.

  And later, Judas counted out silver coins the religious leaders gave him. One by one he counted, rendering none unto Caesar, through bleary, tearfilled eyes. The guilt was foreboding and crushing. The guilt he felt, a rough noose around his neck. The dead tree looming large dark, beckoning him unto its aged embrace.

  His regret poured out of him, unrestrained. No way to regain a single thing once pure. Judas would be hated universally, forevermore, he knew.

  He climbed to the dead branch, the
sturdy remains. He fingered the coins and counted them out, not having spent any. All thirty pieces of silver glinting their accusations at him. All was true and there was no recourse because all is lost.

  The pain of realization was too much. He dropped coins as they were counted. With each one crawled closer to the Pit of Despair. The wailing and gnashing teeth of the damned was plain and clear.

  They laughed with wicked glee and great mirth. They waited for his final moment of courage. When Judas slid down to them, they’re going to rip him to shreds. Dig in his brains with forked tongues.

  The last coin flittered to the ground. This vision, this haunting, never left him for long. Judas always saw and felt and heard and tasted the evil scenes slamming about in his head. He could never turn this movie reel off. Sputtering breath, contracting muscles and contorted limbs followed along with the movie, just for fun. Time lost and no stop button ever, ever.

  Judas gut himself. Gut himself like a dinner trout. His inners dropped. He fell from the tree, but the neck would never break. This movie would always be the same, without variance. Judas knew no mercy was deserved, none forthcoming. He was condemned to swing back and forth in lazy circles. He suffocated, gradually, as time slowed to a standstill. He was swimming in amber. Quantifying chaos and counting evil deeds of entire generations. Ships floated backward into the horizon and yet Judas still lived.

  Then the dogs came.

  They came out of the Walled City, fighting for Judas’ assortment of succulent organs and spongy flesh. The strongest, meanest and hungriest feral beasts snapped at his bowels. Their snouts were covered with blood, tissue and feces.

  Judas could not stop this movie of him being consumed while wide awake and watching in horror. The pain, the pain and Judas would not no matter how he begged, simply would not ever die…

  Judas pried open the loose floorboard, removed a simple wooden box. He keyed open the padlock and brought the velvet cloth wrapped bundle to his bed, unrolled it. Inside, the cash was in rubberbanded stacks. The money was his god, and one hell of a lot more than thirty funky pieces of silver. He picked up a few stacks of hundred dollar bills. He slowly, methodically, rubbed them all over his new suit. The stacks of legal tender were talisman to him, a blessing. They were his sexual preference, religion, his warm bubble. The money so lovingly polishing his new suit made him feel importante and secure.