Then there was a flash of light, an explosion. Windows in every apartment shattered and flames rose on a pillar of smoke over the apartments. The General grinned. Yes, very satisfying. Great pyrotechnics. He re-holstered his .45 and started to walk away, then stopped. He decided his self-image needed something extra, a finishing touch, a little bit of flare. He pulled the .45 back out, blew imaginary smoke away from the business end, then spun the gun on his finger, attempting to spin right back into the holster. It flew off his finger, cartwheeled through the air and landed on the sidewalk. The gun went off from the impact on the concrete. The bullet struck the General right in the gut, doubled him over. He didn’t fall. After a moment, he straightened up and stood tall… just in time to see the chopper emerging from behind the apartment building like some sea monster rising from the depth. It rose amid black smoke and licking flames, the rage of the fire around it masking its rhythmic growl. It hovered there, over the building.
A mouth opened to bare rows of shining, silver teeth, each one reflecting the General’s image, and in the bulbous eyes the General saw himself warped and twisted as if in a funhouse mirror. The buzzsaw tail hung low, spinning and buzzing like a million angry killer bees. It scraped across the rooftop, dug in… Screams inside as tar shingles were sprayed into the air. The tail sliced right through the building like the Tasmanian Devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
The medivac chopper had transmogrified into a metamorphosis of dragon and helicopter, an aberration of machine and myth. As pieces of tar shingle rained down on him, the General closed his eyes…
…and he was alone, echoes in his mind of the lives he had seen ground to hamburger, burned to blackened ash; and the dragons turned to regard him coldly. It was too much, too much light and heat; and the screams were still deafening to him. There was no one left, no one at all, and it seemed as if there had never been. And there was nothing, just the dragons. The rest was gone, disintegrated before his very eyes, burned out, faded away, ceased to be. He hung on to those few echoes in his mind, of life within. He turned himself inward to feel the reality they represented, safe from the dragons. There was nothing left for him outside. Outside, the dragons could get him. Inside, the world was what he wanted it to be.
“Jovah! Jovah!”
The voices, calling his name, were Outside. He wanted to hide, to make them Go Away. The Grey Nothing came quickly, even while he still felt his body around him like a prison, while he still understood what he was, who he was. His body hurt… like sandpaper scraping away his skin, light stabbing his eyes with microscopic daggers, sound punching through his ears like an ice pick, scrambling his brain, churning his mind. The Grey Nothing beckoned, promised freedom from these things. It would be so easy to rest there, to float comfortably numb. Gone.
The General opened his eyes.
He would not give up the way Jovah had. He would not give in to the Grey Nothing. The only thing that could destroy him was the heli-dragon, because it was his nightmare… it was Jovah’s nightmare, and only that could consume the General. If that happened, if the General allowed himself to be consumed, then Jovah would give up again, turn his back on the world and disappear into the Grey Nothing, this time forever. And the General would cease to exist.
The heli-dragon bellowed. It sounded like giant gears crunching together, a ton of grinding metal. It swooped at the General, buzzsaw tail swinging down. He dove to the side as the tail whipped out at him. It nicked his shoulder, ripping away the sleeve of his jacket and slicing deep into the muscle. The buzzsaw tail also cut right through Hanna’s Jeep, ripping through the gas tank. As the General climbed to his feet the Jeep exploded, flipping the back end up, the whole thing over onto its roof.
The heli-dragon pulled up and turned around. It came at the General again. He ran, forgetting about his .45, which shimmered out of existence. It was another hallucination made real, courtesy of the drug and Jovah… as was the heli-dragon, as was the General himself. He understood this, knew that if could just not believe in the heli-dragon it would disappear as the gun had. The problem was this: would the General cease to exist, as well? He was cut from the same cloth as the heli-dragon, the cloth of Jovah’s delusional dreamscape.
The General dove for cover as the thing whizzed past. The buzzsaw tail plowed a long trench in the ground a few inches to his left. He was up and running before it began to pull out of that dive. He leaped over a chain-link fence, cut through a back yard past barking dogs, running as fast as he could. The heli-dragon followed. It swooped toward him again, opening its jagged maw. The General ducked behind a brick wall as the heli-dragon spit fire at him. A long stream of flames flashed against the wall, bricks exploded and burned. The General bolted from cover. The flames from the heli-dragon would burn anything. Brick. Rock. Steel. Anything.
He cut across a parking lot as the heli-dragon maneuvered above him for another strike. Ahead stood a huge, blue house with a crawl space underneath. If he could hide under there maybe the heli-dragon would be unable to find him and would go looking for other prey.
The Blue House! It was Io’s little voice, managing to break through the General’s barrier. Go there! It’s safe! Go there!
He hit the ground and rolled as the heli-dragon meteored past. The buzzsaw tail cut into the parking lot and threw chunks of tarmac into the air. The General scrambled to his feet and dashed the last thirty yards to the Blue House front porch. The heli-dragon circled the house then came in low toward the front. The General tried the front door. Locked.
The heli-dragon closed in, mouth opening. Puke of the Gods…
The General kicked a window in and dove through just as a jet stream of fire washed over the porch. Flames shot in through the window after him, but nothing, not even the curtains, caught fire.
Safe. He felt it. And he felt something else. Sparrow. This was the place he’d been looking for. This was where Sparrow lived. He knew the heli-dragon would not be able to do anything to the Blue House, now that he knew whose house it was.
Through the window he watched it. It circled the house, then hovered over it. The entire house vibrated as the buzzsaw tail bounced harmlessly off the roof. Twice more it spewed fire, but the flames splashed against the Blue House like water. The Blue House was indestructible. Finally, the heli-dragon gave up and flew away with an angry, frustrated roar.
The General breathed a sigh of relief. He was still in one piece. He was still in the game.
“Let’s see what we have here,” he said. His heart leaped at the thought of his voice, rough as splintered wood, sounding off where Sparrow lived. It was Jovah who was excited, but that excitement infected the General whether he wanted it to or not.
A sound caught his attention. A low, electronic moan. He followed it through the house, into the living room, then the kitchen, all the way to a small room in the back of the house. It was someone’s bedroom, a double bed wedged into a space barely large enough for it, a folding card table and computer in the center of the room. The moan came from a clock/radio alarm, droning away. Waiting for someone to come.
Like the General. Waiting.
A roach skittered across the floor. The General ignored it. What caught his eye, though, was a stack of magazines in one corner of the room, on the floor. He picked up the one on top. The cover was a black and white photograph of Sparrow, lips puckered obscenely, about to kiss the lens of the camera. It was captioned, THE SEXUAL ADVENTURES OF A LITTLE BIRD, PART III.
He took the magazine into the living room, shutting the bedroom door on the insistent alarm. He sat in a chair and pulled out his pipe, lighting it. Smoke formed a cloud in the middle of the room. He opened the magazine to the first page, which was titled Six Tallboys of Magnum Malt Liquor Kicked My Ass by Tom. The text began: It’s about 3 a.m. and I just got back from a party at Holly and Jodiee’s where I drank six tallboys of Magnum Malt Liquor and I think I’m about to puke all over the computer so hold—Okay I’m back. I’ve been calling dinosaurs in the bathroom fo
r the last fifteen minutes. So where was I?
The General turned the pages until he found The Sexual Adventures of a Little Bird by Sparrow. It started: I was totally crashed, zonked out and snoozing my way through life when loud knocking on my window startled me out of dreamland. I grabbed the sawed-off Louisville Slugger I keep by my bed and pushed the curtains aside. It was Pinhead (lead singer for local punk rock faves the Psychotics). I let him in, and he immediately zipped his way out of his jeans and climbed into bed with me, sliding his hand down my boxers. He likes to run his fingers through my pubic hair, which really turns me on! We’re just friends, really, but last week I decided to jump his bones after we saw a movie on campus at the student union. He’s skinny for a sin machine, but he’s a horse with a Prince Albert, which is awesome.
The General stopped reading and closed the magazine. He wondered if, freed from Jovah’s influence, he would feel the same way about Sparrow. He didn’t think so.
Greyish-white smoke hovered in the middle of the room, reminding the General of the Grey Nothing that Jovah had lost himself in.
He closed his eyes.
He felt uncomfortable in the rented tuxedo, but Hanna was radiant in her dress. After the prom he had two weeks until he was gone. Marines, just like Dad. Hanna didn’t want him to go, of course. She was afraid something would happen to him.
“There ain’t no war on or nothin’” he told her. “Desert Storm is over, and there won’t be nothin’ like Vietnam was, that’s for sure. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I’ll write every day,” Hanna promised. “I’ll write things you’ll like reading, too. And maybe I’ll include some pictures.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of pictures?”
She just smiled.
The General opened his eyes. Hardwood floors, ceilings fifteen feet high, and the smell of ammonia after having just been cleaned. The Blue House was immense. He could feel its massiveness all around him. It had presence. It was more than wood and nails and paint and fiberglass insulation. It was more than square footage surrounded by trees and grass.
He closed his eyes again.
“Daddy, don’t go!” Io cried. She threw her little arms around his neck. “I don’t want you to go!”
“Daddy has to go, sweetheart,” he told her in as gentle a voice as he could manage. “It’s just for a little while. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“No you won’t! You’re never coming back!”
“I promise I will come back, Io. I will.” He let her go, then stood up. Io’s mother stood in the doorway, silent. He tried to look at her, but she was out of focus, blurred, almost not there at all. He tried to say her name, but nothing came. He turned around then, and left.
The General opened his eyes again.
The Blue House breathed. That’s what it was, what the General was feeling. It breathed. Jovah couldn’t even breathe. But he could dream. He was dreaming now. Whenever the General closed his eyes he shared Jovah’s dream. This dream, the one he was having now, wasn’t the war dream. It seemed more real, not the unreality of the battle with the heli-dragons.
The Blue House felt as if it were waiting patiently for the General to close his eyes again, let this new dream play itself out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to close his eyes again, though.
But he did anyway.
Rain. Deuce stood out in the open, getting soaked, as he waited for the train. No one was there to send him off. No one cared about him, and he certainly didn’t care about any of them. Might have been different if he’d bothered to tell anyone that he’d gone and joined the Goddamn Marine Corps. No… they wouldn’t have come. They would have laughed at him. Especially his father.
Dope addict, junkie, needle freak, zombie… those were his father’s words and they all meant the same thing: son.
Not anymore, though. Deuce was going to be gone and no one would have any idea where he was. They would never guess the Marines.
He pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit it up, not caring if anyone saw him. He took a hit and mellowed out a little. He’d heard that drugs were easy to get in the Marines, especially since Vietnam. Like prison. Supposedly it was easier to get dope in prison than it was out in the world.
A train whistle sounded in the distance. He sucked in as much of the joint as he could, then held his breath for as long as he could before coughing out all the smoke. He squeezed the lit end of the joint between his thumb and forefinger, then popped it into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
A few minutes later the train pulled into the station.
They were false memories, the General realized. They were all part of Jovah, based on real memories but distorted by death. The General didn’t want to experience Jovah’s re-created memory of the real General Archimedes Carter. He wasn’t going to close his eyes anymore.
Outside he heard sirens wailing, in every direction. He knew it had to be the heli-dragon burning everything in its path. He tried to remember how they had destroyed the heli-dragons the first time, after they had wiped out Alice Company. Fear made them stronger, they’d learned. Fear had created them in the first place. He had helped create the one that was out there now. Nothing he could do about that, though. It was an irrational phobia, and it wasn’t even his own; it was Jovah’s.
What killed a heli-dragon? Rationality? Conquered fear? Belief that it had a weakness, an Achilles’ Heel? Belief that it could die? Answers, instead of questions?
Whatever. He wasn’t about to go and hunt the thing. Let it burn the city to the ground. Let it kill the real people. He would stay put in the Blue House where the heli-dragon couldn’t get him, and he would wait. With his eyes open. He could stare at the wood floor all day, trace the patterns in the grain with his eyes. They were almost as familiar to him as if he’d been there before.
But of course he had, as Io.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” came a woman’s voice from the kitchen. The General pulled his .45 and went to look. Nobody there.
“See, it’s not a real butterfly,” said the voice. He recognized it as belonging to the woman from whom he’d taken Io.
“Yes it is real. It’s just plastic.” The General knew Io’s voice, of course.
Then they appeared, as ghosts… Io and the woman. Emily, he knew from Io’s memories. He could see right through their spectral forms. Io held a plastic butterfly in one hand, flying it bzzzz in the air above her head while Emily laughed.
“You’re so silly,” Emily said to Io.
The front door opened, and Sparrow and Tom entered. They were also ghosts of the past.
“Sparrow!” Io hugged Sparrow’s legs.
“Hey, kiddo,” Sparrow said, rubbing Io’s head.
“We got a movie,” Tom said. Io let go of Sparrow.
“What is it?” Io asked.
“Lady and the Tramp.”
“I’ll make popcorn,” Emily announced.
A few minutes later, when the microwave oven beeped, the General could actually smell the popcorn. He inhaled deeply. Tom, Sparrow, Io, and Emily settled on the sofa as the movie started…
Fade out.
The General found himself standing there alone again in the Blue House. But the house wasn’t empty, he realized. He also now knew what the Blue House signified, and why it was impervious to the heli-dragon’s attacks. It was The End. The fun was over. The Blue House was the brick wall and he was about to smash into it, shattering into a thousand shards like a brittle dream, each shard a miniature mirror of the distorted past.
The Blue House held the echoes of their lives. It kept them safe, kept them alive. Like ripples caused by a pebble dropped into a pond. Eventually the surface of the pond was going to calm down, smooth over, the disturbance absorbed into an unbroken mirror. It would happen to him if he wasn’t careful. The Blue House kept the ripples alive, though. That was why Io still struggled within him, why her essence had yet to be totally absorbed.
It wouldn’t protect him, tho
ugh. That was why it didn’t matter, really, if carried out Jovah’s orders or not. But… if the Blue House kept its memories of Io alive, then part of the General was alive. Io was part of him. So a piece of him was as much a part of the Blue House as the trusses and cross-beams. An echo.
The General sang, softly:
“From the Halls of Montezuma,
to the shores of Tripoli
we will fight our country’s battles,
in the air, on land, and sea.”
Chapter Nine
Lena met Sparrow and Tom about a hundred feet directly over the Hippodrome State Theatre in downtown Gainesville. Sparrow and Tom were holding hands, but they weren’t glowing like lovers, with the radiance of recent sex. They looked worried.
“Where have you been?” Tom asked Lena. He sounded almost angry.
“Just floating around,” she said. She didn’t look at either of them. “Mostly over campus.”
“Have you seen Hanna?” Sparrow asked. Lena looked at her. Sparrow’s eyes were wide open, her face pale. Something bad had happened.
“No, I haven’t. What’s wrong?”
“Something’s going on,” Tom said. He looked around them nervously, as if expecting an ambush from any direction. He and Sparrow were acting like a couple of strung-out, paranoid crack heads. “We think Galactic Bill may have been killed.”
“Killed?”
“We went by his place,” Sparrow said. “We wanted to tell him how great this acid is, but he wasn’t there. The front door was wide open. The apartment was a wreck. There was blood splattered all over the walls.”
“Blood?”
“Hanna was the last person we know was with him, so…”
“You think she killed him?” Lena asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” Tom said.
“I don’t think she did anything,” Sparrow said, slowly shaking her head. “But there’s something going on, and she knows more than we do. I’m sure of that.”
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