Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  “I mean, it doesn’t seem very likely,” I said. “The terrier story’s difficult enough for most people to swallow, but it strikes me as even more improbable that the chap started out as a fern, or rhododendron, or those little bushes you see on the sides of—”

  “Not that kinda plant!” said Phil. “I mean a spy. The kind who’s here to spy on the Regent, or planning to stop her, or working against her plans, creeping around and working against us like some kinda weasel.”

  I was interested to learn that this was what weasels did, but rather than putting that point to Phil, I simply asked why he and his fellow guards would suspect Zeus would get himself wrapped up with any of that.

  “Would you just stop pestering me?” said Phil, whose attentive resources seemed more limited than most. “This part’s fussy,” he said, eyeing the needle closely and then looking down at Nappy’s arm. “And I’m doing it in a hurry.”

  “What’s your hurry?” asked Vera. “And why did Llewellyn and the others take off in such a rush?”

  The question seemed to have caught Philly the Rook off guard, for rather than merely telling us to shut up once again, he let the answer slip right out. Or at least it was something approximating an answer, for all he said was “the Napoleons are revolting.”

  “They’re not so bad once you get to know them,” I said. “I mean, Jack, or Bonaparte, or Judas, by whatever name he goes, is a horrible little gosh-help-us who can’t be trusted with pointy objects, but others are—”

  “I mean they’re rioting!” said Phil. “The Regent took a whack of guards with her. Looks like the freaks saw this as a chance to get some o’ their own back and cause a fuss. A bunch of ’em broke out of the cells and set about the guards. They called for backup.”

  “Why’d they pick you to stay behind?” asked Vera. “Not much help in a fight? Bit of a glass jaw?”

  This rather seemed to rankle, for the chap turned the colour of an irritated beetroot, spat on the floor, and turned his back on self and cellmates, muttering oaths and curses.

  His attention finally turning back to the job before him, Phil once again inspected the large, angry needle. Then, in what I thought was a rather unhygienic manner, he licked his thumb and used it to wipe down a spot on Nappy’s wrist. This seemed to cause Nappy to stir, for she wriggled a bit and groaned into her gag.

  “Leave her alone!” shouted Zeus, more vehemently than ever, once again pounding his palm on the energy barrier.

  Zeus’s outburst seemed to amuse Philly the Rook, influenced largely by the fact that Zeus was safely ensconced behind the energy thingummy. He turned and grinned hideously, and I remember thinking that his head now needed only a candle or two to complete the jack-o’-lantern impression.

  “Not such a big man, now, are you?” said Phil. “Can’t handle what’s happening to your girl?”

  “She’s not my girl,” said Zeus. “She’s a prisoner. And you can’t treat prisoners like that.”

  “She’s a Napoleon,” said Phil. “She’s only gettin’ what she deserves.” And apparently “what she deserved” amounted to the insertion of the needle into her arm, for it was at this moment that Phil squirted a bit of the liquid stuff through the tip of the needle, and then took aim at the spot he’d “cleaned,” if you could call it cleaning, on Nappy’s wrist.

  “Leave her alone!” shouted Zeus.

  This drew a snicker from Philly the Rook who, sticking a tongue out of the side of his mouth — which I took to be indicative of the fact that he was concentrating on the task before him — placed the needle against Nappy’s skin and began to push.

  SLAM.

  That was an instance of what we literary types call “onomatopoeia.” I apologize for slipping into it without warning, but it couldn’t be helped, for I can imagine no better way to capture the sudden crash which overwhelmed the senses and sent vibrations shooting through the Feynman person, not to mention all of the other persons assembled. And the source of the slam in question was not far to seek. Zeus, apparently filled to the brim with righteous wrath, had slammed himself shoulder-first into the coherent energy thingummy in an effort to get his mitts on Philly the Rook.

  The effort wasn’t what you might call a complete success, for while plaster fell from the walls, and whatever ceilings are made of fell from the ceiling, the coherent energy thing remained coherent. At least it seemed to. I mean to say, lights dimmed, the energy field buzzed, and Philly the Rook made a face which made it clear to one and all that he was losing confidence in the ability of the barrier to do its thing and keep him separated from Zeuses.

  Zeus wheeled ’round, stepped toward the back of the cell, and with a face that had MAXIMUM EFFORT written across it in large capital letters, he charged full-bore toward the barrier again. He reminded me forcibly of one of those creatures who charge about the savannah crashing into things. What are they called? A sort of armoured-war-hippo, if you catch my drift. Name sounds something like a popular form of surgery . . . rhinoceros! That’s the baby — though now that I see it in print I rather prefer “armoured-war-hippo.” At any rate, that’s what Zeus reminded me of now as he barrelled toward the energy thingummy.

  Vera crouched to the ground to shield her head from falling whatnots, I pressed myself to the side of the cell and did a fairish impersonation of wallpaper, Fenny burrowed into the recesses of my costume, and Philly the Rook just stood there looking agog.

  SLAM!! This time with two exclamation points and a larger-than-average font.

  When the irresistible force finally met the immovable object, a whole host of things happened all at once. Lights flickered wildly, as though we were at some sort of discotheque or rave or whatever the ghastly things are called, still more plaster rained from the cell’s supporting walls, someone uttered a shrill squeak (although whether this was Vera, Philly the Rook, or the undersigned remains a point of contention), and the coherent energy barrier rather failed to live up to its name, for it lost both energy and coherence and no longer amounted to anything in the shape of a barrier. Zeus blew straight through it, leaving sparks and a profusion of fizzling wires in the places where the barrier had met the cell walls. And, as I rather imagine he intended, Zeus ended up being up-close-and-personal with a rather surprised-looking Philly the Rook.

  I wonder if you’ve ever seen one of those large bears who inhabit the western shores of Detroit Columbia, where the Frazier River feeds directly into the Styx — probably not, as most people don’t seem to get out that way very much, what with all of the dreary rain and soaring real estate prices. But if you have, you may have observed those economy-sized brown bears — Kodiac, I think they’re called — swatting salmon out of the river whenever feeling remotely peckish. It was that way with Zeus now. He was the bear, I mean to say, and Philly the Rook was the salmon, for the former scooped up the latter with a mighty, hairless paw, and seemed to watch him wriggle for a heartbeat or two before slamming him on to the river’s shore — the part of which was played, on this occasion, by the wall outside Nappy’s cell. There was a dull or sickening thud, a gasp of air from Philly the Rook, and a brief sort of gurgling moan you hear when people receive a tax bill.

  Phil lay twitching on the floor, still resembling the landed salmon I alluded to a moment ago, and Zeus, perhaps disappointed to learn that there was no further barrier activated on Nappy’s cell, cheesed the hungry bear routine, and also the armoured-war-hippo routine, and simply bounded into the cell.

  Vera hopped to her feet and joined him, self bringing up the rear with Fenny carefully pocketed for safekeeping. We rushed to Nappy’s side.

  Zeus stood there at something of a loss in the flickering lights, which were still doing their discotheque routine in the wake of Zeus’s bit of barrier-bursting. Vera faced him from across the recumbent Nappy, who now wriggled against her bonds with renewed vigour, aware of all the surrounding commotion but not apparently cott
oning on to the fact that — as I once heard Ian put it — the U.S. Marines had arrived.

  “It’s all right,” shouted Vera, over the buzzing and popping of lights and other electrical thingummies. “It’s us. We’re getting you out of here,” whereupon she busied herself with buckles and knots and things, removing Nappy’s blindfold, gag, and the lion’s share of her bonds. Zeus completed the procedure by breaking a sort of handcuff arrangement by which Nappy was affixed to the medical trolley, a feat he achieved with no more effort than I might have expended in breaking out of a wet paper bag or snapping a thread.

  Zeus helped Nappy to her feet. She seemed more than a little groggy and had the general aspect and appearance of someone who’s just crawled through a hedge.

  “What . . . what eez ’appening?” she said.

  “We’re getting you out of here,” Vera repeated. “We’ve got to get out of the Regent’s cells and take you somewhere safe.”

  And before I could offer up any critiques of this notion, pointing out that we weren’t sure where in Detroit we might be safe from the likes of the Regent, Nappy seemed to shake the cobwebs from her belfry, if I’ve got the expression right, and took a more thorough inventory of her surroundings.

  “Z . . . Zeus!” she said, looking up at the big chap with what I believe is called a welter of emotion. “You . . . you came for me,” she added.

  “It’s . . . nothing,” Zeus faltered, if faltered’s the word, as he continued to help Nappy gain her footing. And what I noticed, more than I’d noticed anything else in the recent exchange, was that he hadn’t said anything along the lines of “call me Terrence.”

  The flickering of the lights seemed to play on Nappy’s upturned face, revealing a justified tear or two, and then gave up the ghost entirely, leaving Zeus, Nappy, Vera, self, and Fenny — not to mention the snoozing Phil — bathed in darkness. A silence fell. And then, somewhere to the sou’sou’west of our posish, there was a brief mechanical buzzing and a click.

  “The door’s open,” whispered Vera.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “That sound,” said Vera. “When Zeus broke through the barrier it must have overloaded the electrical grid. The mag-locks on the door have given way.”

  Well, I won’t say that I knew precisely what any of that meant, but Vera did seem to have a way with electrical thingummies, so I deferred to her expertise. I did raise a point of order, though, thinking it to be in everyone’s best interest that it be drawn to their attention.

  “Doesn’t that door lead to the Napoleons?”

  “That’s what Llewellyn Llewellyn said,” said Zeus.

  “That’s right,” said Vera. “We have to help them.”

  “It seems to me that we already have our favourite one,” I suggested, gesturing at Nappy — not that my gesture did any good in the dark. “Besides, Phil seems to have indicated that they’d already broken free and were doing what Napoleons do best, viz, throwing off their shackles, expanding the Western Front, and making a land grab in the vicinity of the Regent’s lair.”

  “We have to help them!” Vera repeated, this time more vehemently than the last.

  Well, I don’t know about you, but if there’s one thing I’ve always known, it is when, and when not, to raise a fuss. If this Vera — a person who is, I hasten to add, the good egg to end all good eggs — had made it her primary aim and objective to support the Napoleonic rebellion and see it through to fruition, then who was I to bung a sabot into the works? Now was not a time for argument or plea, but a time for all good Rhinnicks to rally ’round and come to the aid of the party.

  I uttered a simple and straightforward “well, bung ho, then,” preparing to follow this Vera into what I supposed would be something like a battle. True, I was emboldened by the fact that our little entourage seemed to have added a Zeus or Terrence to our strength, a thing it’s always good to have whenever heading toward conditions that might prove difficult, or when heading any place where thews, sinews, and an intimidating, colossus-like stature might come in handy.

  A light shone in the darkness. It was Vera.

  That sounded a good deal more romantic and metaphorical than I’d intended, but what I was driving at was that a light literally did shine in the darkness, and the light did come from Vera, who had apparently scooped up a datapad from the vicinity of Phil’s person and now shone its little screen like a sort of handheld, digital torch, adding a touch of illumination to the surroundings. I won’t say the thing lit up our path — it’s fairer to say it cast something of a glow within about eight inches of space around the screen — but its dim halo was enough to pierce the gloom and help us make our way to the door.

  This accomplished, we did the brave thing and hid en masse behind Zeus, exhorting him to open the door with as much stealth as he could muster.

  Vera shone the datalink on the door. Zeus placed a mighty hand or two on the handle.

  He pushed gently — or at least as gently as one can push when one has the muscular strength of a whole herd of weight-lifting elephants.

  It turned out that he should have pulled.

  He tried again, this time pulling.

  There was a click, and the merest suggestion of squeaking hinges, when our ears were suddenly drowned in the sound of several dozen Napoleons in full riot.

  Zeus flung wide the gates, as the expression is, and our little party streamed into a madhouse.

  Chapter 31

  There are some scenes that are too rich for the senses — too thoroughly clogged up with sensory phenomena to lend themselves to ready digestion or description. Scenes that remind you of those spicy soups you get in southern Detroit — I forget what you call them — with too many varied ingredients, tastes, and textures to be sorted out by the human tongue.

  A gumbo, that’s what it is. We waltzed into a sensory gumbo.

  The sound was the first thing to impress itself upon the brain. It was cacophonous, if cacophonous means what I think it does. For not only were there shouts and shrieks of the tactical variety, viz, exhortations to “get down!” or “retreat!” or “get behind them!” coming from guardspersons scattered about the place, but the air was also alive with the animal cries of Napoleons, shouting things like “zut alors!” and “mange ça!” and “votre guide porte des bottes de l’armée” or words to that effect. This was supplemented by the percussion section, being comprised of gunshots, crashing furniture, and the disconcerting thud of feet and fists meeting the fleshy bits of other persons’ anatomies. It was enough to make one wish for a sturdy pair of soundproof earmuffs.

  But the sound wasn’t the only thing one noticed. My initial focus on the aural inputs, as the expression is, is not intended to suggest that the visual spectrum was any less assaulted by the tableau of bedlam spread out before us. No, no . . . once the eyes had adjusted themselves to their surroundings, they were treated — if one can call it being treated — to what one who mixes metaphors might call an orgy of anarchy in full bloom. The room into which we stepped was one of those two-tiered numbers, with the lower echelon, if that’s the word I want, being occupied by guards running every which way, diving behind desks, firing pistols, and hurling cannisters filled with some gaseous substance up toward the upper level. This upper level, which seemed to be lined with cells not unlike our recently vacated home-from-home, seemed to be Napoleon central, for dozens of the frenzied little chaps kept popping up behind the surrounding railing, raining destruction down upon their adversaries and cursing a good deal. The destruction which they did rain down seemed to be chiefly comprised of whatever in Abe’s name they could lay their hands upon, this including a large number of bedpans, medical beds, fire extinguishers, and — I apologize for the graphic nature of what’s to follow — assorted bits of guards who’d been unwise enough to organize a sortie behind enemy lines.

  There was no perfect separation of the Napoleon
s and the guards, for several members of the Napoleonic contingent had come down from the relative safety of their perch and closed into what I believe is called the “mêlée range.” It took a moment or two for me to realize that this forward-line contingent was led by none other than Jack — or Bonaparte, or Judas, or Brutus if you prefer — who seemed to have hand-picked a particularly ravenous bunch of mad-eyed Napoleons to follow him into battle. Two of these, I noted with interest, were the Napoleons with whom I had recently hobnobbed on the Detroit University bus. This group descended upon a turtling crew of guards, setting about them with a frenzy which reminded me of a pack of wild piranha meeting up with an unsuspecting knot of bathers. The guards did put up something of a fight. One might even say they displayed the will to win. But Jack and his crew of revolting Napoleons had the bloodlust, and I reflected, in that detached way of mine, that this was one of those noteworthy circumstances in which an unhealthy dose of psychopathy could make all the difference.

  As my attention zoomed out from the central battlefield, as it were, I became aware of an upturned table not far from our current posish, behind which crouched Llewellyn Llewellyn and the remaining members of the Eighth Street Chapter. Llewellyn Llewellyn seemed to have formed a makeshift flagpole out of a chair leg, upon which he waved a white T-shirt, apparently signalling the fact that he’d taken something of a laissez-faire attitude toward this spot of mayhem, washing his hands of the current imbroglio and letting the Napoleons go about their business.

  I turned my attensh from the fray and looked to Zeus, wondering why this behemoth in human shape, always ripe for a bit of a dust-up, hadn’t charged headlong into the brawl.

  My q. was answered.

  While I had been taking in the full scope of the unfolding anarchy, Zeus’s attention was earmarked, if that’s the expression, for a solitary spot at the edge of the room. It was a smallish alcove containing a brace of medical beds. Three of them, to be precise, all positioned around a grate in the floor. And it was clear that the principal object of Zeus’s interest at this moment was the reddish-brown, notably lumpy fluid slowly flowing through that grate.