The other reason Goat believed that the doors to hell were swinging open—the reason that filled him with true despair—was the insight he’d had while waiting for Homer to come out of the comedy club. It was a process. It was an analysis of character motivation, and Goat dissected it the way he would with actors playing roles in a movie. His training, after all, was movie direction.
“I think I understand now,” said Goat.
Homer grunted. “What?”
“I understand. I get it.”
The killer glanced at him. “What is it you think you get?”
“Your plan.”
“My plan? I don’t have a plan.”
“Okay, let me put it another way,” said Goat. “I think I understand what the Red Mouth is telling you to do. I think I can envision what the Black Eye wants everyone to see.”
Homer smiled. It looked like a genuine smile, too. “You had a vision?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what? Did the Red Mouth start whispering in your ear?”
“Maybe,” said Goat, “it sort of came to me.”
“What do you mean? What are you seeing?”
“You’re just going to drive across country, stopping every once in a while for a bite, and then keep going. You want to spread this thing as far and as wide as possible. You want to kill the whole fucking world, don’t you?”
Homer thought about it for a
while as they drove on through the rain. “Yeah, that about says it.”
“Is any of that stuff about the meek inheriting the earth true? Was any of that what you believe or was it all bullshit for the camera?”
Homer’s smile was slow and sly. “Does it really matter, boy?”
“I need to know.”
The lights of the big rigs in the opposite lane illuminated Homer Gibbon as he smiled again and shrugged.
“Wait … that’s it?” demanded Goat. “You put me through all this shit and then you brush me off with a fucking shrug?”
“What’s it matter to you?” asked the killer. “It’s all going to work out the same whether it’s true or not.”
Goat made a disgusted sound low in his throat.
“Dr. Volker told me what I am and you know what that is, don’t you, boy?”
Goat said nothing.
“I’m a fucking zombie. I’m already dead. You ever wonder why I move like I got arthritis? You don’t know your basic medicine? I got rigor mortis. That means I’m already rotting. I may hear the Red Mouth speak to me, but when I look into the future with the Black Eye, you know what I see? I see me fucking dead and gone, motherfucker.” Homer suddenly struck the steering wheel with the heel of his palm. “That’s what I fucking see. Me. Dead. So I figured what the fuck. I might as well turn this into a party town. If I got to go then everybody’s got to come with me. Every-fucking-body. And, yeah, to answer your question, I do believe. And what I believe is that life’s a bitch and then we all fucking die. But not alone, boy. Not alone.”
Homer punctuated his remarks with a brutal laugh. Totally without mirth or humanity. A dead man’s laugh. A killer’s laugh.
“It’s the end of the world, boy. Just like the song says. And you know what? I feel just fine.”
Goat stared at him and something in his head seemed to break. To snap. To tear open. Maybe it was the Black Eye opening so he could see his own future. Maybe it was that. If so, the future that Goat saw was that of a desolated world. It was a wasteland of disease and rot, and there, standing amid an endless crowd of unmoving, unthinking, undying dead, was his own body. Robbed of life, of hope, of any possibility of anything. It was the ugliest thing he could imagine. Bleak and pointless.
He leaned closer to Homer Gibbon, wanting to see the killer’s face clearly in the whitewash of headlines. As each of the big interstate truckers whisked by he saw that evil face in a stark strobe. Each blink, each flash image, was identical. Inert, eternal, irredeemable.