Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

“She’s gonna be our baby’s grandma, though. Don’t you think we should—”

“Hey, did you hear me asking for opinions?”

The phone stopped ringing, and Gina’s husband of two months came around behind her. “Whatever she said to you, I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“She meant it.”

“People say things when they’re upset. She’s just too proud to apologize.”

“Whatever. I don’t care. I’m looking ahead, just like she always taught me.”

“You care,” he said, setting his hands on her shoulders.

Gina propped her elbows on the table, resting her forehead in her hands. Her hair was a rag of pink-streaked black. Her stomach felt bloated, the size of a hot-water bottle shoved under her shirt. Though sensitive to touch, she let Jed gently massage her muscles and lower back. At least he was trying to help.

Any relief was appreciated. On a daily basis, arrows of agony came shooting through her womb. They arrived from all directions—the TV and radio, the grocery store newsstand, not to mention bits of gossip.

Sympathy pains, she called them. Her baby reacting to the sorrows that Gina saw all around. What was it Thoreau had said, about artists carrying the wounds of their generation? She was no artist. She was nothing really. Who was she, to bring a child into such a world?

“What’d the doctor tell you today?” Jed asked.

“Nothing’s wrong, he said. Some women just get it worse than others.”

“It’s your body. What does he know?”

Gina shrugged a shoulder. The subject was getting old. She arranged the chess pieces and began moving them, deriving familiar comfort from their polished feel and stately presentation.

“You playing against yourself, sweetheart?” He was still massaging.

“Sort of,” she said.

“You’re, like, the only chick I know who plays chess.”

“Chick?”

“How ’bout, ‘hot mama’?”

“Hilarious, Jed. No, I’m going through the moves of the Immortal Game, this famous match played in London, back in 1851.”

“Immortal?”

“Because it hasn’t died. Even then, people realized it would go down for the ages as this example of brilliant sacrifice.” She shuffled pieces on the board and tried to explain, but found little receptivity from the lunk-head behind her. “You don’t get it, do you? Are you even watching?”

“I see it,” Jed said. “I just don’t see, if you know what I mean.”

“Anderssen—he’s the one playing white—and look at how he only captures three pawns from the other guy. But he gives up almost all of his own pieces to win. Both of his rooks, a few pawns, a bishop, and finally his—”

“Queen.”

“Regina,” she said, rolling the r in her native Romanian.

“Okay, sure, I get it. That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, pink strands brushing her nose as her husband resumed his well-meaning back rub. “Takes a lot of courage, laying it all on the line like that,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d be able to do it.”

“I betcha you would, if you had to. You’re a pretty tough chi—”

“Chick. Go ahead and say it. I dare you.”

They both laughed, and for the rest of the evening, the arrows of pain seemed to remain harmlessly in her quivers. She knew they would come raining down again soon enough, but she was a warrior.

Honor . . . duty . . . combat.

She was going to fight this pregnancy through to the end.

Atlanta

Mrs. Erota Pace stretched out her legs on a swatch of lawn. The air was cool, crisp. Around her, in this famed park, businesspeople ate lunches, while college students tossed Frisbees back and forth.

Her contact was three minutes late.

“You snooze, you lose, mister,” she practiced her English aloud.

Centennial Olympic Park, a showcase for last year’s festivities in Atlanta, had been the target of Eric Rudolph’s bomb full of nails. Meant to undermine a government that allowed rampant unrighteousness, it was the sort of over-the-top act Erota would expect from a man as arrogant as he.

A few weeks back, here at this same spot, she had met a man of equal conceit. She’d spotted him—smelled him, was more accurate—and found he was host to a local Collector. A Collector more than eager to mete out his own destructiveness. Inspired by Rudolph’s deeds, he, too, had bombed a nearby abortion clinic. In late April, with Erota tag teaming him, the man had wreaked similar violence on a lesbian nightclub.

All part of his reign of holy terror. Blame the media, the voices, the gods.

Of course, in lining up these missions, Erota was prepping him for her real target only weeks from now: Erlanger East Medical Clinic, Gina’s hospital in Chattanooga.

Good-bye to the Concealed Ones. Hello to the End of the World.

“Okay,” she spoke aloud. “Where are you?”

Erota tilted her head back, staring through sunglasses at a sky humans would say was gray and depressing but to her was a ceiling of marbled splendor.

This world was wondrous. A forbidden fruit, if you will.

Like all Collectors, she reveled in its beauty, longed for its pleasures, while despising the creative touch behind it. How could a loving being create such things, then place restrictions upon them? What sort of ego-centric creature would punish and Separate those who refused to bow at His every command?

Thank God—Erota snickered at this irony—for extending grace to these putrid two-leggers. Through them, she and her ilk could still sample pleasures.

Each day, while her husband, Ray-Ban, was playing at his pharmaceutical sales and golf, she tried to take it all in, a vampire exploring her five senses and doing her best to choose a favorite.

Touch.

Oh, the joys to be found here. She was a big fan of sexual temptations—had been since her temple prostitute days. With 1990s technology fast becoming part of her knowledge base, she saw unlimited possibilities. She’d already drunk from the libidos of her husband, sister-in-law, and a number of the business partners. She was a kid in a candy shop, as these Americans liked to say.

Smell.

This more subtle pleasure often caught her by surprise—the aroma of bacon cooking, Atlanta Bread Company, or the soft scent of roses. It was closely linked to memory too.