Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  There was a Bonfire Night rattle outside. Someone firing a machine-gun, probably into the air. Then a rumble of explosion. The first time, Lowe and Penny had been certain it was an earthquake. It was just the usual LA firefight, Officer Fuhrman—of the security squad— explained, "spies and the spooks offing each other, saving the community the trouble."

  "I suppose Joanna will publish this," Penny ventured.

  Lowe felt queasy.

  "Of course, that's what should happen. John and Michael will be delighted. Lilliput can bring the bastard down. And there's no question but that he deserves it. But I can't help feeling like a puppet."

  "I know what you mean."

  Penny waved her arms up and down, as if on wires like Muffin the Mule.

  "Someone carefully assembled this, and gave it to me. I can't help but feel that some sinister, smirking, snakelike superman is snickering."

  "This land is blighted by Satan," said Beverley. "This is where I shall found my ministry."

  Nancy's eyes glowed.

  Lowe wasn't surprised.

  At the Hollywood Bowl, Beverley's speaking in tongues had provoked a minor riot. Worshippers had rushed the stage and, in a mad rapture of devotion, nearly killed the vicar.

  His dark suit had been shredded, and was now held together only by safety-pins. His face was scabbed and scarred. He had lost weight as he gained intensity. His hands were wrung out and red with stigmata.

  "Fucking gobshite bollocks cunt!" Beverly yelled.

  Nobody thought the language unusual. Lowe realised how close glossolalia was to Tourette's.

  "Amen," said Nancy.

  And the word was fucking gobshite.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Lowe saw the divine green spark flickering in Beverley's eyes. But he had been seeing Blair as a red-eyed demon with horns and fangs. And Sir Cliff was ageing rapidly, like Dracula exposed to sunlight.

  He was used to the Meltdown visions.

  "I shall make this truly the City of the Angels," declared the Rev. Bev.

  "Alleilua," breathed Nancy.

  Officer Fuhrman provided an armed escort so Penny and Lowe could go shopping on Rodeo Drive. The most luxurious Party Stores in the USSA had been here, and they were still open for business, with murderous-looking, olive-uniformed killer guards at every door. It was said in America that you could buy anything on Rodeo Drive. There were certainly fourteen-year-old boys and girls in abundance, some in the obvious gear of whores the world over, others crisply-dressed and clean-cut. There were even a few still in perfect Junior Pioneer uniforms, with red caps and socialist merit badges. Some wealthy remnants of former regimes wanted to stay with their old pleasures. Everyone in sight was armed, but then again so was Lady Penelope.

  She was disappointed. The clothes were out of date by London and Vienna standards, and not especially well made. Californians believed in pastel and dayglo, sequins and rhinestones.

  In the most exclusive vest shop on the Drive, Lowe searched in vain for a present to send his son. He had said he would try to find a picture vest with a typically American image—President Ewing, an old-time cowboy or Al Capone with a cigar. Instead, there were only left-over Russian or British icons—Ken Dodd, Rudolf Nureyev, King Andrew and Queen Sarah, Doctor Who. In Los Angeles, everyone wanted to be foreign.

  He wasn't too concerned with shopping. He was still struggling with the Maxwell problem.

  He had written up a blazing Joanna Houseman expose, packing in as much of the dirt as could be contained in a single article. It was devastating, his best piece of writing in ten years, and if published would utterly destroy a loathsome personage. The scoop of a lifetime, the stuff that every news hack dreamed of.

  But...

  After me, the deluge, said the arsehole. A deluge of shit.

  "Look," said Penny, jogging him out of his thoughts. "It's those fellows in the hats."

  Kl

  Back in the USSA

  It was Jake and Elwood, weaving around the rows of garments like shoppers in Tesco's, piling their arms with purchases.

  "I didn't think of you as pastel types," Lowe said.

  Jake and Elwood caught themselves up short, looked at each other, and at the draping of mildly-coloured clothes they had no intention of paying for, and threw them up in the air.

  An armed guard shot at them.

  "They have the death penalty for littering in California," Lowe said.

  Jake and Elwood adjusted their sunglasses and ran out of the back door. Two guards jogged after them, and piled into an alley-full of ash-cans.

  "It's never going to work, is it?" Penny said. "America?"

  The door of their room was unlocked. Not forced and broken, but unlocked.

  Lowe felt the handle warming in his grip.

  The eyehole blinked at him.

  Take the money, open the box, said the arse-hole.

  He signalled to Penny, clattering up after him with her bags of purchases, to be quiet.

  He turned the handle and stepped in.

  William Brown was sitting at the desk, reading the Joanna article. His machine-pistol rested on top of the Maxwell documents, like a paperweight.

  "You shouldn't leave sensitive material like this out in the open," Brown said. "There are spies everywhere."

  Lowe relaxed, realising Brown wasn't about to kill him. People who were killed by Just William didn't see him first. But anger boiled up.

  "Come to check up, have you?"

  "You puzzle me, Mr. Lowe. Or should I say Miss Houseman?"

  "Why?"

  Penny leaned on the door and lit up a fag. If the worst came to the worst, she had a gun. She might even surprise the trained killer.

  "Because you haven't delivered this excellent article to your friends at Li lliput."

  "I'm saving up for the postage."

  Brown put the article down.

  "It's Urquhart, isn't it?" Lowe said. "He's pulled Alan Clark out of the fire three times already. If Maxwell goes down, that's the only

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  pro-Lab-Lib paper out of the race. Then maybe the government can survive the next election."

  "What about all the poor Mirror pensioners?"

  Lowe wished he had the gun now.

  "Don't tell me you care about them!"

  "Funnily enough, I do. My entire career has been based on an overdeveloped sense of what is right and what is wrong."

  For a moment, Brown reminded Lowe of Philby.

  "If I don't do it," Lowe said. "Someone else will."

  "And you won't have to be involved," said Brown. "You can sit on the sidelines again, Mr. Lowe. Taking notes, kidding yourself you're a neutral observer. Deliberately dropping catches to get the match over with. Pouring poison into your stomach."

  "He's right," said Penny.

  "I know he's right. That's why I hate him."

  The final show was a let-down.

  The Rev. Bev. was off the bill, hospitalised with heat prostration. It was the two knights, Sir Cliff and Sir Bob. At the end of the pier, like a Punch and Judy show.

  If it weren't for a hefty kickback, the pier wouldn't have passed the safety inspections. It creaked and cracked under the weight of the invited, VIP-only audience.

  Lowe thought the enormously obese Maxwell, whose weight could be gauged in large fractions of a ton, might plunge through the weakened floor into the sea. Best thing for him.

  Before Maxwell began his speech, a ripple went through the audience and a lot of uniformed folks—militia leaders, top cops, vanguard generals —scrambled out of their canvas chairs and headed for their bulletproof cars and, in a couple of cases, armoured personnel carriers. Even Miss Mulwray had shown up; she had picked thirty of her best-looking Nicaraguans and former Green Berets to form her bodyguard, then dressed them in Ruritanian uniforms, all scrambled egg and lanyards and lace. Their guns were real enough, though.

  The sounds of gunfire drifted from the shore. Serious sh
ooting. Helicopters buzzed low over the pier and swooped across the city.

  "At last," said someone nearby.

  "What's happening?" Lowe asked.

  "The crack-down. Restoration of the rule of law."

  Fl

  Back in the USSA

  A column of fire rose from somewhere in Santa Monica.

  "By dawn, it'll be finished."

  Sir Robert droned on.

  Brown had taken the Joanna expose and arranged for its priority delivery—in a diplomatic pouch?—to Lilliput. It was out of Lowe's hands.

  Maxwell talked about new business opportunities.

  Helicopters dropped fire on people.

  Maxwell was talking through his arsehole.

  Almost all of the Americans were gone. They had grabbed their guns and got into the action. Only Miss Mulwray and her Praetorian Guard remained. The old girl was deep in conversation with Penny, catching up on a couple of years' worth of gossip about the various "sets" of people they knew back home.

  Before the show, Lowe had run into a BBC-TV crew scrabbling for some shots of the stars. Maxwell posed with Lowe and Penny, smiling like a happy ogre showing off his children. He was delighted that someone was finally paying attention. But the cameraman kept letting his equipment sag on his shoulder, and the interviewer seemed to be a twelve-year-old American girl. Now, even this pair had rushed back to the city, to get their chance with a big story.

  They would be delighted.

  The girl had explained that the BBC's A-list California crew were in Arizona, covering the big UN action there. It seemed that Van Damme had found evidence linking a vigilante militia with the Okie massacre, and there was a shooting war. There was a lot of controversy about the UN's right to take direct action, but Lowe remembered the field of bones.

  Now, the action was in LA.

  Sections of the city were burning.

  Another wave of helicopters came in off the sea.

  Sir Cliff tried to compete with the war. He called up a couple of remaining dignitaries from the audience, and tried to get them to sing along. Lowe noticed that the performer didn't cringe when bombs went off, and wondered if he might not be deaf.

  Now was the time to get clean.

  He made his way backstage, picking carefully through the tangle of overturned chairs. He had been drinking Meltdowns, but wasn't drunk.

  He knew what was real.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Penny followed him. She helped him stand up straight when he tripped.

  A chunk of the pier broke away, girders snapping. A stray mortar shot had landed.

  "Did I do that?" he asked.

  "No, dear."

  "That's all right then."

  Sir Cliff kept on singing. Staff with fire extinguishers sprayed a corner of the stage.

  In the backstage area, Sir Robert Maxwell squatted on a tiny stool, looking like an over-the-hill sumo wrestler. After his speech, and the mass walk-out, he was drained. His face had collapsed, like an empty scrotum.

  He looked at Lowe and Penny.

  "They left," he said. "Yankee bastards walked out."

  There was an enormous explosion on shore. Maxwell's face was briefly red-lit.

  "It wasn't you, sir," Lowe said. "It was the fighting. Los Angeles has gone up like a firework."

  "Ungrateful bastards."

  Maxwell stood up, swelling like a sail.

  "All I wanted to do was bring this godforsaken country the benefit of my expertise, to help them get back on their bloody feet again. And they walked out!"

  This was not a good time for confession.

  But it had to be made. First confession, then absolution. Then redemption.

  Lowe had his eye on redemption.

  But Penny had a gun just in case.

  "Sir Robert, I cannot tell a lie..."

  Penny laughed.

  "...for I am the viper in your tit. I am Joanna Houseman."

  Maxwell's eyes shrunk to points of suspicion.

  "What?"

  His hands opened and closed like an angry gorilla's.

  "I've been writing the articles in Lilliput. The ones about you."

  Maxwell took in a deep breath. He inhaled the fire and hate of Los Angeles. His dinner jacket split down the back. Horny spines projected.

  " You're going to die, fuckface!"

  It was the arsehole voice, amplified to a typhoon roar.

  Back in the USSA

  The huge hands closed on Lowe's throat. The enormous, pitted face loomed close. Burning shit was breathed into Lowe's eyes.

  He felt his body going limp.

  Strangely, the explosions and Cliff's cheer-up wailing faded. He heard only the gentle pounding of the waves. And a distant echo of Charlie Holley...

  Every day, its a-getting closer

  This might not be a bad way to end.

  Lowe was on the floor, and the enormous weight of Sir Robert was on top of him. This man, who had killed Germans with his bare hands, was squeezing the life out of him.

  A silver tube pressed against Maxwell's temple.

  "Let him go," said Penny.

  The hands relaxed.

  It didn't matter. Sir Bob's weight was enough to force every ounce of air from Lowe's lungs.

  "Get off him, Fatty."

  Maxwell rolled over, sobbing.

  Lowe sat up. Penny was elegantly posed, her gun as perfect an accessory as her Faberge lighter.

  The press baron lay in a writhing heap.

  Another face appeared in the gloom.

  "When you reach the edge of the world, where do you go?" Brown asked.

  Lowe looked down at Maxwell.

  "Home," he said.

  "What if you have no home?"

  "Everyone has a home," said another voice. Miss Mulwray. "Sometimes they don't know where it is, or perhaps they can't go there, but there is always home, always a place that owns you."

  "So what on earth am I doing here?" said Lowe, still sprawling on the ground. The question seemed more important than the pain in his windpipe or any possible broken ribs.

  "I haven't a bloody clue, young man," said Miss Mulwray.

  Brown helped him to his feet, then walked away. Penny took out a handkerchief and dabbed at what he realised was a cut on his forehead.

  Miss Mulwray sat on the floor, cradling Maxwell's head in her lap. "They never gave you a chance, did they?" she was saying, as much to herself as to him. "Happy to take your money or accept your hospitality for the weekend, but most of 'em looked down their noses

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  at you behind your back. Made snide remarks about how you weren't really 'one of us' while they were guzzling your champagne. I know, I know, there there..."

  The pier was burning, and the remaining Roadshow personnel were escorted back to the shore. It took four men to help Maxwell, who was an untenanted hulk.

  Lowe felt free.

  But the city was burning.

  This was the end of People's Road 666.

  Dawn found them on the beach. The sun came up in time to cast some light on the pier as it finally collapsed. Then a cloud of thick, choking smoke blotted out the sky. Helicopters buzzed through the cloud, whipping the smoke to tatters.

  Lowe and Penny huddled together, coughing.

  "Look," said Penny, pointing.

  The heap that was Sir Robert Maxwell gathered itself together. He ripped the last of his tuxedo from his back, and tore off the rest of his clothes.

  Few people took notice. A few hours ago, someone had raked the beach with gunfire. There had been casualties. Everyone was keeping their head down. Sir Cliff and his band had dug fox-holes, which filled up with sea-water.

  Maxwell stood, naked, and walked to the water's edge.

  "He's going for a paddle," Penny said.

  "No," Lowe replied, breaking away from her and standing up.

  Maxwell walked into the water. It rose around him, lapping at his equator-like stomach.r />
  Lowe staggered to the shore.

  A rocket-like flare streaked overhead, fired from somewhere up in the city. It landed a hundred yards or so out to sea, in the middle of a blackish slick.

  Fire blossomed.

  Maxwell's head bobbed.

  Lowe was knee-deep himself.

  Fire spread in a circle. The sea was burning.

  Maxwell's head went under.

  Something vast and reptilian stirred in the depths of the Pacific,

  El

  Back in the USSA

  warmed by the burning film overhead. Lowe felt the tidal assault of displaced water. Limbs and tail were in motion. Snake eyes opened and looked up at the flame on the water. Lowe knew it would come, summoned by Maxwell's final breath bubbles, and would swarm out, striding across the city. Where its feet fell, thousands would die.

  Lowe stood and looked out at the Pacific.

  And cried like a baby.

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  Kim Newman is the author of The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, Anno Dracula, The Quorum, The Bloody Red Baron, and Life's Lottery. His nonfiction includes Nightmare Movies, Wild West Movies, and The BFI Companion to Horror.

  Eugene Byrne is a freelance journalist specializing in weird historical stuff and fringe religions, as well as being deputy editor of Venue magazine in Bristol, England. He has had several short stories published in Interzone and elsewhere. He does all his own ironing.

  jacket painting, design, & typography by Arnie Fenner

  MARK

  ZIESING BOOKS

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pages

  Back Cover