THE GLORY BUS 23 страница

LAUREN & SHARPE

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SPECIAL DAY!

Pamela smiled as she flipped the special-recipe Pitsburgers for the wedding feast. Then she slipped them onto buns for Nicki to distribute. It wasn’t every day that Pits celebrated the wedding of two of its townsfolk. People came from miles around to watch Sharpe slip that band of gold onto Lauren’s finger. Many of the well-wishers were men, women and children whom Sharpe had saved in the past.

Pamela’s smile broadened. She’d never seen a couple more in love.

‘Ouch. ’ The final burger on the skillet spat a drop of hot fat onto the back of her hand. Shaking her head, she used a pair of long-handled kitchen tongs to grab the offending burger. As she did so, she couldn’t resist scolding the meat that had stung her. ‘That’s the last time you ever hurt anyone, Norman Wiscoff. ’ She laid the Pitsburger on a bed of lettuce, then dropped a slice of cheese on top of the steaming patty of meat.

Norman meat, to be precise. After all, Priest had insisted that it would be a waste of perfectly good eating to leave Norman at the bottom of the cliff for the vultures and the coyotes.

Norman had always wanted to be cool. In the end he got what he wanted. He wound up in the cafe’s deep freeze.

That was after he’d been expertly rendered into cutlets, fillets, chops, spare ribs and burgers.

‘Pitsburger to go! ’

‘Is that the last one? ’ Nicki asked as she collected the plateful of food.

‘The very last one, ’ Pamela announced, beaming.

‘Well, come out and join the party. ’

They walked out into the sunshine, where the party was in full swing.

Just Deserts

That evening, after everyone else had gone home, Pamela joined the other residents of Pits as they waved Lauren and Sharpe off on their honeymoon. The setting sun hung low, flooding the Mojave Desert with a light of pure gold. Cacti stood in the sand; they looked as if they were waving, too.

When the bus pulled away, with Sharpe at the wheel and Lauren sitting right behind him on a bench seat, the good folk of Pits cheered and whistled and waved.

Lauren glanced back into the body of the bus. Okay, it might be unusual to take a bus full of passengers on your honeymoon.

But Sharpe was different, she reflected.

Come to that, the bus’s passengers were different, too.

The mannequins sat silently upright in their summer clothes.

Right in the front two seats were three newcomers.

Sharpe has unique ideas. Some might call him a visionary. Though not everyone understands his motives. But Lauren did.

Because the three new passengers on the bus were Boots, Duke and Norma

n. Or, at least, they were three plastic clothes-store mannequins that Sharpe had artfully made to look like Boots, Duke and Norman.

Boots with her short bleached hair, wearing her skimpy tank top and white cowgirl boots.

Norman sat beside her in a white T-shirt and beach shorts, his eyes staring glassily ahead.

Duke lounged by himself in the middle of a seat designed for two. He wore a white T-shirt like Norman’s, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Sharpe had painted his features well. The bad-boy upper lip still curled. One plastic arm reached back to rest on the seatback. On that arm a tattoo read: BORN TO RAISE HELL. Even though the body was synthetic, he still looked cool.

Why had Sharpe brought replicas of these three onto his bus? Lauren had wondered about that. The other mannequins were Sharpe’s reminders of the people he’d saved from the killing heat of the desert.

At last she realized that these three dummies were a warning.

They were saying:

If you ever come to Pits, California, pop. 7, you’ll be greeted with the warmest of welcomes. But, take care. If you arrive with the intention of causing hurt, then you might end your days just like Boots, Norman and Duke here.

Out on the desert highway.

Riding the Glory Bus until the ‘sweet by and by. . . ’

And that, my friends, means until Judgment Day.

Richard Laymon, The Glory Bus

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