There was a chorus of sympathetic agreement from the others, still in their neat bomb-evacuation lines. Administration middle-management had no love for rulebreakers.
“We’ll let these people know that rules are rules, and in hell there is justice,” said Innis, emphatically slapping the wiper down on the ticket.
Boom.
*
Walker was turning away just as the van blew up. The explosion threw him and Lumumba forward and down onto the rooftop’s wet tar only a moment before bits of shrapnel from the blast showered them.
Carefully, he got to his feet. The van and everything close by was a shredded inferno.
“You got that scope?” he asked Lumumba.
Lumumba checked. “Broken, man. But even from here, I can see there aren’t any survivors.”
“Original package and the card inside it should be intact, right?” That was important, Walker thought; critical to getting back at that son of a bitch, Guevara.
“Should be. Doesn’t look like the club itself took much damage. Six feet of rock between the blast and the meeting room,” said Lumumba.
“Good,” Walker said. “The attack needs to be appropriately credited.” He smirked. “Viva Guevara.”
*
‘Car Bomb Kills 41 Administration Staff,’ read the headline of the next morning’s New Hell Times. ‘Guevara Claims Credit.’
Guevara threw the newspaper hard against the café wall.
“I didn’t do that!” he snarled.
Cobain, who’d heard the news on the radio a little earlier, squinted at him. “I know, boss. You don’t have to convince me. But somebody did it. Left the card, and called Authority five minutes later. Our guys aren’t happy.”
Tim and a couple of goateed hipsters stormed in, Tim kicking at a chair as he marched angrily up to where Guevara and Cobain were sitting.
“I thought you were going to give us a heroic, romantic revolution,” Tim hissed. “Not some cheap car-bombing of bureaucrats nobody cares about.”
“I didn’t do it,” Guevara muttered. “It’s a slander attempt.”
Tim threw down a copy of a badly-mimeographed magazine.
“Reliable media says you did. And says that you said you did. Man, I thought you were cool. Not just some terrorist.” He wiped his bloody wrists angrily on his jeans.
“You didn’t even go in shooting,” one of the hipsters agreed. “Just blew them up. Cowards.”
“It’s slander,” Guevara muttered again. These people had been worshipping him last night. Hanging on his every word. And now they were saying this about him?
And they turned their backs and left – deserting him.
Rosa came in, agitated. “You want the bad news first, boss, or –?”
A moment of relief: “No, the good news. Thank you.”
“I was going to say the bad news or the worse news. OK, the relatively good news is that the new kid, Boz, is out there writing your name, although he’s writing ‘sucks’ after it.”
What was happening? All these people – they’d loved him! They’d worshipped him!
Those Committee bastards. That little jerk, Walker.
If this was the relatively good news, then…?
“And what’s the worse news?” Guevara asked, starting to get nervous. Something worse? What could be worse?
“Somebody ratted you out. Administration’s coming. They didn’t care before, but now they think you killed a bunch of them. And they know where you are.”
Yes. Faint sirens in the distance. Getting closer.
“We better scram,” Cobain said, starting to get up.
“Yeah. You, get out of here,” said the beatnik behind the café’s counter. “Revolutionaries are welcome in my place. Jerkwater terrorists can go hang.”
Those sirens were getting louder.
“I didn’t do it!” Guevara pleaded. “It was those Committee people!”
“You said something else in the note at the scene,” the beatnik growled.
“Camp’s still there,” said Cobain. “And I’ve got some connections out in Lost Angeles. But if we don’t blow town now, we might not be able to.”
On the street, agitation. A man in a pink Afro spat at Guevara, got his boot. You could feel the hostility. The woman who’d emceed his speech last night saw him coming and crossed the street. And those sirens were still getting louder.
Damn it. There had to be alcohol somewhere; he needed a drink. Not even my fault! I didn’t do anything!
Battle was one thing. A fight to the last with his gun in his hand – but this: running; his supporters contemptuous; people writing shit about him when they’d worshipped him earlier?
“Yeah, run, cowardly bomber,” sneered a goth who’d worn a red bandanna in his honor the night before.
Somebody in the crowd pressed something into Guevara’s hand; his fingers instinctively closed around it. But Rosa and Kurt were urging him on, and it was only a couple of miles later, with sirens lower and fainter again, that he could stop to see what it was.
In the mouth of an alley, Kurt looking nervously at the street, Guevara found he’d been given a small radio detonator with a bit of notepaper wrapped around it.
‘I told you the first time, you’d been fired,’ the note said, in smooth nineteenth-century cursive which Guevara had to struggle for a moment to read. ‘Saying things twice is unpleasant. ––W. Walker.’
Tale of a Tail
by
Nancy Asire
“What’s Wellington doing now?” Marie asked Napoleon.
Napoleon glanced to his left toward Wellington’s house. From his vantage point on his front porch, he could see over the top of the neatly trimmed hedge to what appeared to be a carefully manicured lawn. His neighbor was crouched down, apparently engrossed in minute examination of his grass. Napoleon lifted an eyebrow and turned to Countess Marie Walewska, his mistress in life and afterlife, who stood at his side.
“Who knows? Maybe he’s found a new pest destroying his grass. Or, he’s worried it will turn yellow from what’s left of the flood in New Hell City.” He looked across the street to Decentral Park. The Viet Cong had, for the moment, gone to ground. There hadn’t been an artillery shelling from them for a while now, and that was without benefit of the periodic delivery of barbequed ribs, courtesy of Hellview Estates. The whole thing made him nervous. And farther across the Park, it was equally as quiet. He hadn’t heard from the Romans in days ... well, more like a month. All in all, hell being hell, something was going on. Something with a capital “S.”
And as for the French…. Installing his friend, Grand Marshal Duroc, as his surrogate in Louis XIV’s overly opulent palace had been a stroke of genius – even if he had to admit so himself. Napoleon loathed the place. Oh, he was still in charge of the French in New Hell, but he preferred his house by Hellview Golf and Country Club above anything that could be found in that baroque mishmash Louis preferred. From the beginning of his sentence to hell, Napoleon had earnestly tried to stay invisible if possible. Pull a few strings here, pull a few strings there. Stay out of the way of those who could do real damage to the old timers and the newly arrived. Still in charge? Well, that might be open to debate, too. News was hard to come by these days. What little filtered to this side of Decentral Park bore the taint of rumor upon rumor. And one thing he had learned since he had arrived in the infernal regions was not to trust rumor. Unless, of course, the rumor was rumored from someone he could trust, or a rumor he himself had concocted.
“Why don’t we go see for ourselves what Wellington’s doing?” he asked.
Marie shrugged her shoulders and led the way down the drive and around the hedge. Wellington was now nearly flattened on his lawn, his posterior much higher than his head. So engrossed in whatever he was doing, he didn’t seem to register he had company. Napoleon crossed his arms on his chest.
“Wellington, what the shit is going on?”
Wellington jumped nearly a foot, his he
ad snapping around and a startled expression crossing his thin, long-nosed face.
“Damn, Napoleon!” he got out. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on someone that way. Heart attack and all that.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. I walked here like any normal person would. What is it you’re so focused on?”
“My grass!” Wellington stood, brushed stray green remnants of his lawn from the knees of his white British officer’s breeches. “Look at it, will you! It’s beyond belief!”
“What ... the grass or you, butt to the sky, examining it?”
Wellington drew his chin back and assumed a hurt expression. “You needn’t act that way. I’m trying ... really trying to obey the rules. And it’s impossible! Bloody impossible!”
Napoleon studied the grass. “Looks fine to me. You just cut it yesterday.”
“Precisely my point.” Wellington held out a ruler. “The Home Owner’s Association says my grass can only be, at the very most, two inches tall. And, believe me, I measured the entire lawn. Every last part of it. There wasn’t a place where the grass was taller than an inch and a half. And now look at it!”
“I’m looking and I still don’t see the problem.” Napoleon glanced sidelong at Marie, who was trying her absolute best to hide a smile. “I’m no horticulture specialist, but it can’t be much over two inches tall.”
“Then check it out yourself, since you’ve got the bloody eagle eye.” Wellington offered the ruler, his face going red with frustration. It was obvious he only now realized Marie stood next to Napoleon. “Good day, my lady,” he said, bowing slightly.
She smiled at him and nodded back.
“Eagle eye, is it? Let’s see.” Napoleon knelt, placed the ruler down to where it touched the ground. “Merde! What’s happening here? Your grass is two and a half inches tall!”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It couldn’t have grown an inch in a night!”
“Huhn.” Napoleon rocked back on his heels and stared at the ruler. “Marie,” he asked, “could you bring me the ruler I’ve got stashed in my desk? For comparison’s sake,” he finished, looking up at Wellington who was still red-faced and the picture of exasperation.
“Damned Home Owner’s Association,” Wellington grumped. “If it isn’t one bloody thing, it’s another. And that new HOA president ... he’s, well –”
“Quiet.” Napoleon hissed. “You don’t know who’s listening.”
Wellington made a show of looking to the left, the right, behind his back and across the street. “No one, that I can see.”
“How long have we been in New Hell, Wellington? Long enough that by now I’d think you’d know ears don’t have to be attached to a body to hear.”
“Oh, you’re right. It’s just so frustrating!”
“No argument there. We’ve been lucky so far that eternal frustration is one of our main sources of torment.”
Marie came around the end of the hedge, Napoleon’s ruler in her hand. “Found it,” she announced. “But it wasn’t where you left it last.”
“Where now?” Napoleon asked with an exasperated sigh.
“In the kitchen.”
“And this is new?” Napoleon took the ruler and shook his head. “I don’t know about you, Wellington, but everything in my house grows legs in the dark and relocates.” He knelt and duplicated the test he had made with Wellington’s ruler. This time, the results were even worse.
“It seems you’re in trouble, mon ami,” he said, standing and fixing Wellington with a stare. “Three inches.”
Wellington’s shoulders slumped. “If I’m caught with grass three inches long –”
“I know, I know. The fines.”
“I suppose I’ll have to mow again. Damn! At this stage, I’ll run out of fuel before the week’s out.”
“Don’t feel so bad,” Napoleon said. “You’ve got grass that grows inches in hours. I’ve got the driveway that births weeds in the cracks when my back’s turned. And they bloom, spreading their seeds to my yard! Which, I hope, is better behaved than your lawn. If I have to pull another weed today, I’ll ... well, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”
“We’ll pull weeds,” Marie said. “I’ve already got a basket full.”
“Do you think he’s home?” Wellington asked, a slight nod of his head toward the residence of the president of the Home Owner’s Association on the other side of his house.
“Who knows.” Napoleon lowered his voice. “One more thing that’s annoying about this HOA is that damned rule book for Hellview Estates. I’ve read the entire thing, but every time I open it, there’s a brand new list of prohibitions. Remember? Last month, any wood on our houses had to be painted a tasteful shade of taupe. The month before, it was ecru. I don’t know about you, but I got awfully tired of painting.”
“Oh, well. I’m off to mow. And if you’re smart, Napoleon, you’d better check your lawn, too. Whatever my grass has might be catching.”
*
Dinner that evening was shared with Wellington who, keeping to past tradition, turned up at the precise time when Napoleon and Marie were fixing it.
“Mooch!” Napoleon groused. “Don’t you have your own kitchen?”
“Oh, I do, but it’s so much more pleasant here.” Wellington spread his napkin across his lap. “Besides, I’m rather tired from mowing. If that grass is taller than two inches tomorrow –”
“Scalped it, did you?”
“To three-quarters of an inch. I measured twice.”
“Here, Wellington,” Marie said, extending a glass of wine. “There’s nothing you can do until tomorrow anyway.”
Wellington snorted something vile under his breath, but accepted the glass in good grace. He glanced around the kitchen. “Do you still have your security system up and running?”
“Of course. Attila provided me only the best. And don’t ask me where he got it. I don’t want to know.”
“Well, I hope your house isn’t bugged,” Wellington said, glancing around. “I’ve been hearing rumors. Something big is supposedly going on.”
Marie extended a plate to Wellington. “We’re surrounded by rumors,” she said. “It’s hard to determine what we should listen to.”
“Which one this time?” Napoleon asked.
“Someone overheard someone else saying we’re being visited from Above.”
“Oh, that one. And where did you hear this someone recounting someone else’s rumor?”
“At the Club.”
“And how much had they had to drink?”
Wellington managed to look offended. “I would hardly know. But that’s not the only time I’ve run across something similar.”
Napoleon exchanged a quick glance with Marie. “We’ve heard it, too. From what I gather, it’s Erra and the Seven, and they’re kicking ass throughout the hells.”
The Iron Duke grimaced. “I understand they’re here because some of us are being treated too leniently, considering we’ve been condemned to New Hell.”
“This from a man whose grass needs mowing every day?”
“Would you be serious!” Wellington snapped. “This rumor has me worried.”
“We might need to be worried,” Napoleon acknowledged. “All in all, we have been treated much better than anyone would expect.”
“But it’s not our fault we’re better treated!” Wellington protested. “We’ve served our time in Satan’s armies. There should rightly be some reward for that.”
“No choice in it, mon ami. Neither you nor I exactly volunteered.”
“I should think not!”
A bewildered hurt surfaced in Wellington’s eyes. This, Napoleon could easily understand. They both continually suffered what could be termed “the death of a thousand cuts.” Here he sat, across from his one-time enemy who’d been victorious over him at the battle of Waterloo, yet Wellington had proved a dependable friend. Their friendship was odd at first glance, but not all that surprising: they’d shared common experiences in life a
nd afterlife; they’d even been born in the same year. Once the darling of Europe, Prime Minister of England, advisor and companion of kings and queens, Wellington the Iron Duke had fallen to the level of measuring the grass in his yard, bound by the petty rules of the HOA. No chance here for glory beyond the grave.
And himself? At the height of his power, he had ruled an empire. Europe had bowed to his will and armies had fought historic battles under this command. And now? Paint the house again, Napoleon. Pull the weeds in the driveway. Offer advice to people who asked for it, only to have them decide to go their own way, discounting what wisdom he had gained dwelling in New Hell. He and Wellington had possessed a degree of authority when serving as generals in Satan’s armies, but it was often ignored by other commanders who, on their best day, couldn’t out-think either of them.
Colossal figures from the same era of Europe’s history, they had both become diminished, their ability to decide the direction of their existence for the most part destroyed. Ah, yes, Wellington, we’re in the same boat, you and I. And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. Suffer in relative silence, make the best of what we have, and hope we don’t draw unwanted attention to ourselves.
Wellington had been saying something. Napoleon blinked, abandoning his thoughts.
“Quoi?”
“I said, Have you heard anything regarding this rumor, my lady?” Wellington asked Marie again. He shot Napoleon a puzzled look, as if to question his inattention.
“Only once,” she said, “down at the Unsafeway. I was buying ribs for the Cong –”
“And that’s got to come to an end. Damned terrorists! We’re going broke feeding the bloody lot of them!”
“Think of it as insurance,” Napoleon said. “As long as we keep them happy, they protect our side of the Park, n’est-ce pas?”
“In between killing each other off.”
“Just like everyone else, they keep coming back. Discounting the heavenly audit, what precisely has you so upset?”
“I still can’t figure out why I’m here. In hell, I mean, not your kitchen.”
“According to the Bible, there are more than three hundred and fifty commandments, not just the original Ten.” Napoleon leaned back in his chair. “Everyone alive has broken a goodly number of them.”
Lawyers in Hell Page 12
