"Whoo!" said Bill as his head rematerialized. "What a rush!"

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Green Sun
Chapter 10
Ex Libris Purgatorius

by Donna Lamb

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Ex-corporal Rodney Clarence, once of the Buffalo Soldiers, stepped out from the shadows, holding Bruce Martin's stolen AR-15 carbine. No one in the crowded outdoor mall had noticed the gunshot or if they did, they'd thought it only a backfire from the traffic on the nearby highway. No mortals present could see Bill C. Bubb's body still upright, hands blindly groping for his missing head. "Next one goes through your pretty self, Miss Drake," Rodney called out.

"Oh, please," sniffed Sophie. She spooned up another bite of ice cream, deciding that the little bits of Bill's brain were only a sort of jelly sauce. After a bite she remembered that Bill had smoked eleven toads to her two, besides the extra one he'd actually eaten. "You can't kill us, we're demons." Her tongue tingled with toad toxin from Bill's gray matter. She decided she liked the effect.

"I know that," said Rodney. "But I've spent the last ninety-odd years in Purgatory, being killed over and over in the various methods by which I dispatched enemies of the United States during a long military career. I've been shot in the heart, the head, the throat, the thigh and the back. I've had my neck bones snapped by ropes, tree branches and bolo knives. I've had my ribs stove in by boots, fists and hammers. I've been drowned in salt water and quicksand and I've been eaten alive by crocodiles, coyotes and garbage dump dogs. I'm already dead so I can't be killed but it still hurts--it hurts like Hell!" He nodded toward Bill's body which had groped around for one of the concrete bus benches and had taken a seat. "Ask him," Rodney offered.

Sophie tsked. "Pull yourself together, Bill," she ordered. A ghostly miasma resembling Bubb's monstrous head began forming at the top of the truncated driver's thick neck. "So what, clarence?" said Sophie. "So you can blow my brains out and make me feel pain. I'm the Devil, you idiot. Do you think I'm not tough enough to handle it?"

"You misunderstand me, Miss Drake. I 'killed' Flymaster there to keep him out of the way. I don't have no mercy bullets for you. I'll use the first of these next ones to blow away your jaw. Then I'll start on your hands and work up your limbs, joint by joint. Since you can't actually die, this could take some time." He stalked slowly towards her, not lowering the rifle.

"Whoo!" said Bill as his head rematerialized. "What a rush!"

Rodney changed aim long enough to blow the left side of Bubb's face away with one round. "Ouch, that smartsh!" Bill said. A second shot made a ruin of the rest of the driver's head and Rodney shifted aim back to the Devil in Drag.

Sophie looked down the barrel of the stubby, semi-automatic carbine knowing that he could shoot again before she could vanish herself or summon some suitable defense or counter-offense. She knew too, that Rodney was not the type to give up and she'd be dealing with the ex-corporal attempting to discorporate herself for perhaps decades if she didn't find out what he wanted. Besides, she also knew her own physical cowardice and when he started shooting off her elbows she didn't want to be reduced to begging.

She sighed. "What do you want?"

Rodney told her.

"Impossible," she said.

Rodney blew the ice cream cup out of her hands.

"Seriously!" yiped Sophie. "I can't change the past and I can't un-grant a wish! It's in the rules!" She didn't tell him that she frequently violated those same rules but he knew that. And she knew that as a lawful clarence, he couldn't ask her to break the rules if she appealed to them.

"You'd better think of something," said Rodney. "I know o'Mersey tricked you once. I ain't even going to try that, you're the tricky one. And you're cruel. What I am is ruthless. I'm probably going back to Purgatory for this but my client deserves a fair deal on what was a harmless wish. So hop to it, toad lady." He fired a round that shredded the heels of both of her Tommy Choo's.

"You know she's a drug smuggler?" asked Sophie, limping over to the bench where Bill was again groping for his missing head. "Close to a ton of poison smuggled into your precious United States to kill and blight the lives of hundreds or thousands of people, she's no innocent."

"You ever hear of the Opium Wars? Hell, they were probably your idea. The United States, Britain and France carved up China into markets for opium, so don't let's try to define innocence or justice here. That ain't what we're doing. You know what I want, figure out how to do it. I don't want to argue about it," Rodney said.

"How the Hell do you know about the Opium Wars?" whined Sophie.

"Every book that's ever been purged or expurgated has a copy in the Library of Purgatory. Sundays we got to go there and read, 'stead of suffering our sentences. They show censored films in the cinema there, too. You going to get with the project or do I start blowing away toes?" He gestured with the rifle.

"Okay, okay." Sophie capitulated. "She's not going to thank you for this but here's what I can do...."

continued...

AR15-M4 Photo Copyright 2007 by Igor Koltunov. Used by permission.