Comeback Tour

by Jack Yeovil

  Grissom was there, and Gagarin, Collins, Capaldi, Rusoff, Kuhn, Breedlove, Griffith. The others were turning up by the moment, taking on ever more solid shape.

  WATUSI: CRUSOE.

  Even the Prezz could see them now. And the rest of the Black Hats.

  “What’s going on?” asked the Prezz.

  The First Lady’s brown face was grey with dread. She saw them even more clearly than Fonvielle.

  BESOM: FRIENDSHIP.

  Behind the Prezz, two new shapes took form. Poole and Bowman, lost in deep space since ’68. At least their presence here confirmed their deaths aboard the Jupiter Probe.

  Al Tracy, the first dead man on Mars, was sitting at an unmanned console, his hands filling out. Soon, the ghosts would be solid enough to intervene.

  ZODIAC: SPENCER.

  “Gus?” Fonvielle said to Grissom. “Not now, no… the Dream. You died for it. You can’t betray it now.”

  Grissom looked him full in the face, and mouthed a word.

  ANGELUS: CINCINNATI.

  Grissom’s thin, black lips moved again. Fonvielle couldn’t read them.

  “The Dream, Gus. The Dream is alive!”

  Grissom didn’t look like Fred Flintstone any more. His fishy skin was turning rancid, getting soft. His mouth worked, repeating over and over again…

  “Betrayer,” the ghost croaked.

  It was like a rabbit-punch in the belly.

  The Prezz had a pistol out. He walked across, and jammed the gun to Grissom’s head. The barrel sank into the ghost’s skull. The Prezz wasn’t sure whether to fire.

  SANDALWOOD: LARGESSE.

  “It’s cold,” the Prezz said, his fingers passing through Grissom’s face, making ripples.

  The First Lady was beside him, pulling his hand out of the dead astronaut.

  Grissom looked at the First Lady, and the ghost of a smile appeared on his dead face.

  TOPEKA: DUKE.

  There was an explosion topside, and the whole bunker shook. Only the ghosts kept their footing. Fonvielle blundered against Tracy, and felt the shiver running up his arm as he brushed the astronaut’s insubstantial form with the back of his hand.

  Gagarin had his hands around Addam’s throat, but she was resistant. She still couldn’t see the ghosts, and so only felt a slight breeze. She flicked at her throat, toying with her crucifix, but kept typing, kept registering the codewords.

  MENDACITY: MANDALA.

  The Big Board was still lighting up.

  “Just keep going,” ordered the Prezz. “It’s all a trick. Psychological warfare. Ignore it.”

  VULCAN’S HAMMER: ROYAL FLUSH.

  Fonvielle’s heart was trip-hammering. The Dream was so close. His fists clenched.

  Seawater tears coursed down Gus Grissom’s still-rippling face.

  “Grab the sky,” Fonvielle said to himself, “grab the sky, and never let go.”

  ESCUTCHEON: WABBIT SEASON.

  “Never let go.”

  Captain Marcus’s column rolled through the fences easily. Colonel Presley had done his job well, and there was little resistance.

  Shiba wasn’t comfortable in the human-tailored seat of the amphibious vehicle. There was no room for his tail, and he couldn’t stand up without bruising his thighs.

  Marcus was laying down groundfire and advancing steadily. There was fighting going on hundreds of yards away, out on the concrete expanse of the launchpad.

  Shiba ordered Marcus to press on. It was important to relieve Presley before his people were wiped out.

  There should be a wave pouring in from the sea.

  Shiba leaped out of the transport, and worked his way forwards on all fours, weaving between the explosions and the bullets.

  He wished Inoshira Kube were here to see him distinguish himself in honourable combat.

  A Josephite fell in front of him, and he got his jaws wrapped around its head, wrenching it free.

  He could see Raimundo Rex standing tall on the field of battle, surrounded by fire and smoke.

  Where was Colonel Presley?

  Marcus’s Wooden Horse transport rolled across the concrete plain, its guns rattling.

  A row of bungalows set well away from the firing grounds were being fiercely fought over. Josephite snipers were using them as cover to pick off the sea wave as they advanced up the beach to the sea wall.

  Marcus directed a few shells towards the bungalows, and one was reduced to burning rubble in an instant.

  Scuttling to the top of a wedge of concrete, Shiba could see the beach. There were Suitcase People lying dead and dying on the sand, or being washed back and forth by the waves. It was a killing gallery.

  Shiba saw Elvis, his black leathers scuffed, his thick hair hanging over his face. He was trying to pot the bungalow snipers with accurate shots at their darting figures. But the cover was too good.

  Marcus blew up another building, and the fires spread.

  Shiba saw an iguana man halfway up the beach spin around, blood spurting from his throat, and fall flat.

  An indentee, one of Reuben’s friends, hit the concrete next to Shiba, a canvas sackful of incendiaries slung over one arm.

  “Give me those,” Shiba said.

  The indentee gladly handed them over.

  Shiba took the sackstrap between his teeth and slithered off the wedge, heading for the edge of the field. There was a crushed fence, and beyond that a thick tangle of swampgrass and cypresses. He thanked providence that the Josephites hadn’t done too much clearing, and plunged into the grass.

  His soft belly was scratched on the rusty ends of the smashed fence, but he ignored the trickles of blood.

  He was near the bungalows now, and he saw three of the clone-faced creatures Elvis called Waltons. They were crouched low behind a three-foot high garden hedge, taking turns to snipe at the beach. They rose, fired, sank, expelled a discharged cartridge, and went through the process again. Synchronized like machine gears, they were firing constantly.

  Shiba pulled the tag of an incendiary and tossed it at the snipers. It fell short, but rolled across a neat lawn, coming to rest like an egg against the legs of a pink plastic flamingo.

  The Waltons kept firing, working like perpetual motion machines. On the beach, Suitcase People died.

  The incendiary fizzled, and one of the Waltons half-turned, raising his rifle to his eye and searching for Shiba.

  The bomb was a dud.

  Shiba scrabbled back deeper into the long grass, but knew the Walton had sighted him well enough to fire blind.

  The incendiary flared and exploded, and there was a curtain of flame between Shiba and the Walton.

  Shiba took the rest of the bombs and rushed alongside the row of bungalows, tossing incendiaries at twenty-yard intervals. As the first bombs exploded, he sped up, hoping to get out of range.

  It did not matter. This would be an honourable way to die.

  He yelled his Blood Banner vows. The bungalows were a wall of fire now. Man-shaped flames screamed inside the inferno.

  The beach was safe now, and Suitcase People, still wet, were getting over the sea wall.

  Shiba felt the waves of heat on his back, but realized he had come through alive. He was surprised.

  Something was crashing through the swamp towards him. Something big and mechanical.

  He was out of bombs, defenceless.

  He turned snout-on to the thing, and awaited the killing stroke.

  He tried to sing the GenTech company song, but his throat couldn’t manage it.

  Trees fell, and the grass parted.

  Shiba found himself looking at the snarling radiator grille of a pink Cadillac convertible.

  A woman was behind the wheel. She swerved to avoid Shiba, and the beautiful body sped past, lurching up out of the swamp, its roadwheels bursting from its hull.

  Shiba had never seen such a gorgeous car. It made the company’s Toyotas and Sony LandMasters look like junkyard wrecks.

  The driver waved t
o him.

  “See you later, alligator,” she shouted.

  The wash from the Cadillac rocked him in the water as he tried to follow the car.

  “After a while,” he yelled, getting a bellyful of foul swampwater, “after a while…”

  BLANDISHMENT: DA-DO-RUN-RUN.

  MELACHRINO: VOLARE.

  MCMURDO SOUND: IOLANTHE.

  VARGTIMMEN: SOLITUDE.

  “… Krokodil!”

  Elvis shouted as the familiar pink monster rolled across the Cape. He didn’t have time for questions. He just knew who it had to be.

  There was a wave of Suitcase People breaking over the seawall. Marcus’s heavy guns were cutting even the Waltons down.

  The topside battle was all but over as far as serious fighting went.

  A Marie with a machine gun she should barely have been able to lift stood in front of the Cadillac and fired a burst.

  Krokodil swerved out of the way and crushed the creature under the front wheels. The car squashed the Marie and cruised on.

  Elvis was proud of the old girl. And Krokodil was doing pretty well too.

  Marcus, who was visible in the tower of the armoured car, was making snap dispositions of the remaining forces. It was clear that the Josephites had abandoned the surface of the base to the Suitcase People. But that still left the underground complexes.

  Whatever it was that Krokodil was concerned with, Elvis bet it was down there, under thirty feet of concrete and durium, guarded by heavily armed psycho clones.

  Someone was up in the gantry, sniping at the invaders. One of his bullets ricocheted off the armourplate of Marcus’s transport. It had only been a foot or so off. Marcus ducked back into the interior of the ve-hickle.

  Krokodil extended the Cadillac’s lase, and singed the sniper out of the tower. He fell into the dark shadow Elvis couldn’t account for.

  There were a lot of unaccountable shadows around the base. They stood implacably while the Josephites and the Suitcase People fought, looking on, waiting for something.

  “Toto,” Elvis said, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”

  The Cadillac drew to a halt beside him, and the window rolled down.

  “What kept you?” he asked.

  “I had a dizzy spell,” she replied, “lost a few hours. Whose side are we on?”

  “The green-faced guys.”

  “It figures.”

  There was an explosion nearby, and Elvis cringed. Concrete chips rained against his back and the Cadillac’s flank like hailstones.

  “We have to get underground,” Krokodil said.

  “Sweet thing,” Elvis began, “there’s just one thing I forgot to ask earlier…”

  “Yes?” Her smile was dazzling.

  “What the freak are we here for?”

  WAGNER: MALTHUS.

  Simone Scarlet knew suddenly, with a blinding clearness like the rapture her born-again Mammy had promised, that she had to help the ghosts stop whatever Roger was doing.

  PENCIL LEAD: CALCUTTA.

  The drowned astronaut reached out, and laid a nearly substantial hand on her heart. The cold seeped through her.

  Her mother had been reborn, but her mama-loi aunt stayed with the old ways. She remembered prayers to Damballah, Shango…

  GORDONSTOUN: ROSEMARY.

  The Mad Old Man looked at her, and knew what she would do. He wasn’t sure whether he should try to stop her.

  The Revelations poured into her mind. There was magic nearby. A powerful houngan was in the area. She must find him, and tell him to work his miracle. Then the ghosts could become solid enough to intervene on the earthly plane.

  BRUIN: COPPERPLATE.

  The Sister was nearly through now. There wasn’t much time.

  “Blood,” Roger said calmly. “We’ve not spilled enough blood. The sacrifice has yet to take.”

  GODHEAD: BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

  Roger looked around. Simone realized her saviour was searching for someone to kill. It could even be her.

  “Tozer,” Roger snapped, “pick your three least capable men and lay them down in the bed of the elevator shaft.”

  RAWHIDE: TRAVOLTA.

  The Brother in charge of security didn’t question the order, but he took a few seconds choosing. Roger’s face darkened. Simone realized how close he was to a breakdown. He seemed so strong, so solid. And yet he had been walking a knife-point. There was a great blackness in his life.

  GREENBACK: FIBONACCI.

  Tozer hauled a fat woman, a near-albino blonde boy and a grey middle-aged man out of his line of defence. That left only Waltons, Simone noticed.

  None of the potential sacrifices complained as Tozer pushed them at gunpoint into the shaftbed. The woman lay down with an ecstatic look on her face, delighted to be of service to the Church of Joseph. The middle-aged man just sat down without a word and stretched out, resigned to everything. The albino hesitated, and Tozer chopped his gunbutt into the back of the boy’s skull, dropping him senseless.

  CALEDONIA: ARABESQUE.

  “Bring the platform down,” Roger ordered.

  The drowned man hugged her from behind, his face flattening against the back of her head. Her dress was wet, and her inner eyes were opened. She heard guitar music, and knew the conjure man she must find was a singing shaman. They weren’t common, but she had known one in New Orleans, a piano player in the GenTech recreational house who sprinkled chicken blood into his instrument and wrung tortured music from the keys while telling the girls’ fortunes.

  SPINDRIFT: SEAVIEW.

  Tozer was reconnecting the elevator, a fistful of wires jammed together in a sparking tangle as he wound insulated tape around it.

  PIDACOR: ??????

  Keystone beeped angrily. Sister Addams jumped, tears starting from her eyes. The screen flashed at her.

  PIDACOR: ??????

  She checked her list, and stared at the screen. The beeping continued. Roger looked as if he were shaking with painful rage.

  PIDACOR: ??????

  Addams saw the error, and pressed CANCEL, ending the alarm.

  PICADOR: DALE ARDEN.

  Tozer had the elevator controls working now. The platform was descending.

  The albino was moaning. The fat woman was singing “Tis the Gift to Be Simple.” She was no conjure woman. Her voice was cracked, and grated on Simone’s ears.

  CARDINAL: CHEOPS.

  “Blood sacrifice,” Roger muttered.

  BRONISLAU: CHOP SUEY.

  The Josephite hymn was cut off with a sickening crunch as the platform ground into the elevator bed.

  Simone couldn’t stop herself looking. The blood was welling up in the cracks, and dribbling into the bunker. Tozer was slumped, grey-faced, against the far wall, trying not to be sick.

  “How soon, Addams?” Roger barked.

  Addams nodded.

  HOUSEMARTIN: SHOTGUN.

  “Very soon, Elder.”

  AXOLOTL: PLINY.

  Simone broke away from the ghost, her mind spinning, her body tingling from her partial possession.

  Fonvielle could have tried to stop her, but he just looked away.

  She ran for the elevator, and snatched the controls from Tozer.

  BRIGADOON: FONTAINBLEAU.

  She pushed the Brother away from the platform, and pressed the UP button. She glimpsed Roger’s astonished face as she rose, and heard bullets striking the durium-sheeted underside of the platform.

  She was being pushed upwards on a solid column. There was a lead shield at ground level which could squash her as flat as the three sacrifices.

  But, oddly, she wasn’t worried about that…

  Krokodil felt the rumbling in the shaft beneath the cover. Someone was coming up.

  The Ancient Adversary awoke and uncoiled inside her, swallowing her consciousness at a gulp.

  With inhumanly strong hands, she bent back the lead-durium shielding and rolled it like linoleum.

  Elvis just raised an eyebro
w and pouted, but the lizard-faced army officer in the beret was astonished.

  The shield wrenched free, breaking into three pieces. She spun the largest fragment into the air, and sailed it thirty feet across the launchpad. It scraped the concrete with a harsh scream that set teeth on edge.

  The elevator platform surfaced, exposing to light a shivering black girl in a thin white silk dress.

  The girl looked her in the eye, searching for something she didn’t find. She turned away from Krokodil and looked at the others.

  She had seen many wonders, obviously. The girl looked at Raimundo Rex, Captain Marcus, Hiroshi Shiba and the others without seeming to see anything unusual.

  “Heyyy,” said Raimundo, “chiquitaaaaah! Whass happenin’ bay-beeeee?”

  The girl ignored him, still looking for something, for someone…

  The Ancient Adversary relinquished control of Krokodil, and disappeared back into the depths of her mind. She felt pain in her torn and bloody hands.

  “Which of you… ?” the girl began.

  Then she saw Elvis, and sank to her knees.

  The Op looked behind him, then thumbed his chest with a sullen “who, me?” expression, and shrugged.

  Krokodil remembered the way ’Ti-Mouche had treated Elvis in the swamp. She was the host to a magical being, but he had a touch of the pure-bred, pure-born voodoo in him somewhere.

  “Conjure man,” the girl said.

  Elvis shifted his collar. The Suitcase People were staring at him.

  “Yes,” said the alligator exec, “yes. Conjure man.” He clapped his forefeet together.

  “You must help them.”

  There were dark figures among the Suitcase People, shadows becoming human. Krokodil recognized the spirits of the dead.

  Elvis passed a hand over his hair, shaping it perfectly. “Help them?” he asked. “How?”

  “You have magic…”

  The girl’s words were intently serious. She knew exactly what she was saying.

  “… you must use it.”

  Shiba had slithered off. Krokodil wondered where he had gone.

  Marcus was wrestling with the elevator controls. “It’s no good,” he said. “They’ve disconnected them down there. We’ll have to blast our way in. If that’s possible.”

  “No,” the girl said, “use the magic.”