Santosa burped and gestured for calm again. “I only want fully paid up members of an officially recognized union.”
That didn’t do any good. Everybody in the crowd except for Louis had joined a union, and they were now holding up their membership cards to prove it. The shouting and pushing got worse. Tiffany Tidbits’ big brown eyes grew even wider than before.
Santosa drew a deep breath of oxygen from the mask and said, “A- and B-class citizens keep your arms up.”
This decimated the crowd. Only about twenty-five remained eligible for the crucifixion. A ferret next to Louis dropped his arm, monumentally disappointed. “Always the same. Nothing ever changes around here,” he muttered, and saw that Louis hadn’t moved. “If you’re not A- or B-class, mister, there’s no point in waiting for a miracle. Better get back to work before The Boss catches you hanging around.” When he turned, Louis saw something stuck to his back. A yellow Post-It sized note with I AM AN IDIOT printed across it. Then he was gone, grumbling to another ferret about the injustice as he went.
Santosa burped long and loud again. “Okay, there’s still too many. Only those of you who are A-class can stay and help.”
Flash Freddy dropped his arm and sighed. So too, Louis saw, did Smiggins. Not hiding their dejection, the rest of the B-class citizens began returning to what they’d been doing before the newbie had arrived, grumbling to one another that nothing ever changed around here. Not including Santosa and his little helper, there remained only a handful of A-class citizens to perform the crucifixion, a ferret, a lizard, two jackals, another toad and a rat. They looked exceedingly pleased and gleeful.
Smiggins ambled up to Louis and Flash Freddy, pocketing his union card. “Same old, same old. You have to be A-class to have all the fun around here. Come on, let’s go. We still have to get to the hotel.”
Flash Freddy hooded his eyes and licked his lips, then told Louis and Smiggins to wait a moment. He went over to the wheelchair and whispered in Sanotsa’s ear.
Smiggins suddenly looked more hopeful. “If anyone can get us in there, Flash Freddy can. He’s as smooth as they come. Can charm the pants off a mannequin.”
Still whispering in the toad’s ear, Flash Freddy glanced over at Louis. Santosa, too, caught his eye. Flash Freddy then reached into his suit pocket, removed a wad of cash, counted off some notes, and slipped them into the toad’s webbed hand. In the flick of a lizard’s tongue, Santosa had pocketed the money and burped, acting as though nothing had happened at all.
All smiles, Flash Freddy returned to Louis and Smiggins. They were in. “Santosa was impressed with your little cameo with the whip,” he said to Louis. “He’d like to arrange a lunch appointment with you. Smiggins will organize it with his PA. Well done. You’ve made a friend with big connections at LeMont.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “But he’s only allowed us inside to watch as observers. We stand back and keep out of everyone’s way, got it?” He kept looking at Louis, stressing his point. “Not a word about this to anybody. Santosa’s doing us a big favor. If The Boss finds out, it could be us getting nailed to the cross in there. Do I make myself clear?”
Louis hitched his toga and nodded.
Santosa told his PA to unlock the door, then ordered the weasel to enter. Keeping well back so as not to get in the way of anybody, Louis, Flash Freddy and Smiggins followed the crucifixion party inside. Like all the other HDU’s, a large pit had been dug beneath the observation ledge. Same gray light too. Same god-awful stench of horseshit; and although there were no scratch marks upon the walls, there were some familiar graffiti floating here and there toward the ceiling: THINE EXISTENCE IS A SIN WHEREWITH NO OTHER SIN CAN BE COMPARED, and WHAT EXISTENCE HAST THOU THAT MAY BE OBLITERATED?
The similarities ended there. Beneath him in neat symmetrical rows, thousands upon thousands of weasels and jackals and ferrets had been nailed to a wooden crucifix. It reminded him of the little white crosses he had seen in pictures of war memorials at Arlington and Normandy. Upon them, every single animal wore a thorn of crowns, above which were small signs: “Here is the King of the Jackals,” or “Here is the Queen of the Ferrets.” They were moaning over and over again, “Why hast thou forsaken me? Why hast thou forsaken me? Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Still buckled under the burden of his crucifix, the newbie was also staring at the rows of crosses. Eyes bulging, jaw sagging, only now did he realize his fate.
Louis had seen that look before. He had taken his son rabbit hunting one weekend for his tenth birthday, a supposed father-son bonding session. Camp upstate. Shoot some rabbits. Cook them over a campfire spit. Laugh and talk about girls. The kind of thing every kid would love to do with his old man (the kind of thing he used to do with his grandfather on the farm whenever he got the chance). Not Louis Junior, though. A goddamn useless pussy from the moment he was born, a real mommy’s boy who couldn’t stand the sight of blood and never had the guts to squeeze the trigger on a goddamn rabbit. Though the weekend had been his idea, he should have known better. Still, he had hoped things would work out. One glance at Junior’s face after the first kill told him otherwise. Just like this goddamn newbie now. Eyes bulging, mouth sagging, the kid had turned as white as the rabbit between whose floppy ears Louis had just slammed a piece of lead. Goddamn kid then puked all over his boots and trousers. Needless to say, they never went on a weekend away again.
“This way!” Santosa said to the newbie.
His PA reached up to a jutting rock about half the size of a golf ball and smoother than polished marble. She pushed it into the wall as though pressing a doorbell. Almost immediately, the groans and creaks of large machinery kicked into life. Somewhere behind the nearside wall, giant cogs had begun to turn, silencing the moaning from the crosses. All eyes turned up toward the landing. Then, from the wall behind the groaning and the creaking, jutting slabs began to protrude. So that’s how they do it, Louis mused.
It took less than a minute for the groans and creaks to come to a halt. The protruding steps looked like petrified planks of wood, each one wide enough to accommodate three or four weasels abreast and as polished as the button Santosa’s PA had pushed into the wall, the result of countless thousands of feet staggering down to the pit.
The newbie didn’t move. Though he had recovered his sagging jaw, his eyes were still bulging. One of the volunteering jackals threatened him with a whip, causing ripples of murmuring from the crosses. Just as he expected, the newbie didn’t put up any resistance at all. Urged on by the six volunteers, he dragged his wooden cross down the hundred or so protruding steps to the pit, all but resigned to his fate.
Santosa and his PA remained on the landing with Louis, Flash Freddy and Smiggins, burping orders and instructions down to the volunteers. Almost every head in the chamber had now turned to watch the rat and the ferret dig a posthole in a rare free space near the far wall. As they dug, the two jackals held the weasel to the crucifix while the toad and the lizard hammered nails into his paws. His screams echoed around the chamber with each blow, much to the delight of everyone involved. After the rat had placed a crown of thorns on his head and nailed a small wooden sign above it: Here is the King of the Weasels, the six volunteers set the crucifix into the posthole and hoisted it up. The murmuring, Louis noted, had fallen silent.
“If you really are God,” Santosa said, looking down at the newbie, “why don’t you get yourself down?” He burped long and loud and the six volunteers burst out laughing.
Louis felt a claw on his shoulder and looked over to see Flash Freddy flicking his head toward the door. Louis nodded in reply. He didn’t need to see anymore. Hitching his toga, he glanced over his shoulder. Smiggins was right behind, punching numbers into his calculator and sniggering to himself. Behind the wheelchair, Tiffany Tidbits glanced over her shoulder, caught his eye, then looked away, just as the newbie screamed, “God! Where are you when I need you? Why hast thou forsaken me?”
His lamentation triggered the others into moanin
g all at once, like they had been when Louis first walked in. “Why hast thou forsaken me? Why hast thou forsaken me? Why hast thou forsaken me?”
“Do you see the glory of the After Life, Mr. DeVille?” Flash Freddy said, stepping out of the chamber and down Conduit Number 1. “You get everything you wished for before you died. You really can’t ask for more than that, can you?”
“They don’t really die in there, do they?” Louis asked.
Smiggins sniggered at his heels. Flash Freddy let out a little laugh. “Come now, this is the After Life. They’re already dead. They just stay on the cross until they realize their mistake.”
“That they’re not God?”
Flash Freddy chuckled again and put his claw on Louis’ shoulder. “Really, Mr. DeVille. Have you seen anything so far to suggest that God exists? The After Life is all there is. The Boss is probably the closest thing you’ll ever see to God, and even then he’s humble enough to admit that he isn’t. He’s just that sort of guy. You’ll find he’ll give you everything you want, provided you sign the contract and commit yourself to LeMont International Enterprises.”
They kept walking down Conduit Number 1 for what felt like the rest of the day. The confusing thing was, Louis couldn’t tell whether it was morning or afternoon. There was no sun, only hundreds of doorways and this never-ending dismal grayness. The tunnel made it impossible to tell the time at all. Maybe, when they checked into the hotel, things would be different. Maybe he would see a bit of sunlight. Even moonlight would do.
He goddamned hoped so. This endless grayness was starting to get to him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
End of the Tunnel
THE closer they got to LeMont International Enterprises, the busier it got inside Conduit Number 1. Rats, ferrets, jackals, weasels and lizards hurried this way and that, in and out of side chambers and tributary tunnels, rushing here and there as if they had a million things to do at once. All of them wore blue-gray suits and carried leather briefcases or sets of keys or calculators. Most were either coughing or sneezing or popping pills, and none of them stopped to say hello or even so much as acknowledge their presence. It was all go, go, go.
Flash Freddy stretched his long neck to see above the busy stream of suit and ties and gauge how much further they had to go. “Not far now. The end of the tunnel’s just up ahead.”
Louis guessed they had been walking twelve hours since they had crucified the newbie. A dozen hours in the After Life, though, he reminded himself, went a hell of a lot quicker than when he was alive and kicking in the Big Apple. Probably the equivalent of two hours of “live time” (as apposed to what he was now beginning to think of as “dead time”), which really didn’t help much anyway; it still felt like twelve goddamn hours.
He hitched his toga and sighed. On the wall to his right, a jackal and a ferret were trying to paint over a line of graffiti: WHITE RABBIT FREEDOM FIGHTERS. “I need to rest. I’m exhausted.”
“That’s just the after effects of the pill,” Flash Freddy said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you something at the hotel to help.”
Two more hours later, to Louis’ building frustration, they came to a line of suit and ties five to six abreast that stretched as far as he could see. Most had their heads down and weren’t saying very much, as if used to such inconveniences. A weasel immediately in front blew his snout and popped a pill. Next to him, a jackal had something pinned to his back, a yellow Post-It note with: I STILL WET MY BED. Someone else was coughing further ahead.
Flash Freddy told him and Smiggins to wait while he went to see what was causing the hold up. An hour and a half later, he returned. By that time, the line had swelled by several hundred and only moved fifty or sixty yards forward. “Just as I thought,” Flash Freddy said. “Random checkpoint’s been set up. We’ll be here for another ten hours or so, I reckon.”
“What the hell are they doing?” Louis said. “A goddamn body search?”
“Checking to make sure everyone’s union membership is valid.”
Louis was suddenly alarmed. “But I haven’t had the chance to join one yet.”
Flash Freddy smiled and gave him a wink. “Don’t look so worried. We’ll sort something out. There are ways to make things happen.”
To Louis’ unending annoyance, things didn’t happen very quickly. The line moved slowly and time dragged on and on. Smiggins busied himself punching numbers into his calculator while Flash Freddy went up and down the line speaking to anyone and everyone. “Just a bit of networking,” he told Louis later. “You never know who you’ll need in the future.”
Not long after, Louis heard Santosa barging through the line. “Out of my way! Out of my way!” Over his shoulder, lizards and weasels and ferrets jumped aside to make room for the Grand Pooh-Bah of Workplace Safety and Wages. His warty face looked flustered and short of oxygen as Tiffany pushed the wheelchair by, neither of them noticing Louis or Smiggins, or even Flash Freddy for that matter. Louis tried to make eye contact, but Tiffany’s gaze was firmly fixed ahead as she scurried behind her boss.
“There goes our chance,” Smiggins said, watching them disappear into the distance.
Struck with a sudden idea, Flash Freddy darted after them, calling several times before Santosa stopped. The toad turned his head. “What now? I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got an important meeting.”
Flash Freddy caught up with the wheelchair and whispered in his ear. Santosa glanced down the line at Louis and Smiggins, thought about what the lizard had said for a moment, then nodded. Flash Freddy then handed over a wad of cash, which vanished instantly into Santosa’s pocket. “Hurry up then,” he said, burping. “I haven’t got all day.”
Full of smiles, Flash Freddy trotted back and told Louis and Smiggins to get their running shoes on. The weasel in front muttered to his pal, the jackal who still wet his bed, “Told you. If you don’t have friends in high places, you can’t do anything. It’s who you know, not what you know.” The jackal tut-tutted and shook his head in agreement. The weasel wiped his snout with a handkerchief and sighed, “Nothing changes around here.”
Louis felt like saying, “Life’s a bitch, fellas, and then you die,” but Santosa had already moved on. Louis, Flash Freddy and Smiggins had to hurry to catch up as he bulldozed his way down the line. “Out of my way! Out of my way!” It helped that everyone jumped to the side when they heard him coming, parting like water at the bow of a ship, and it wasn’t long before they had reached the last of the suits and ties at the end of Conduit Number 1.
To Louis’ surprise, there was another arch. Though lacking the bright white light streaming through, it was almost identical to the one at the other end. Its arms glimmered with gold and had an inscription: HERE LIETH THE BEGINNING AND THE END. A plaque on the wall adjacent to it read, “Archway Construction Proudly Sponsored By LeMont International Enterprises. Your Friend For Eternity.” Beneath the writing was a large horseshoe omega symbol enclosing a smaller, fish-like alpha symbol. Everyone’s gotta have a logo, he mused.
His gaze then fell to a solitary official behind a desk at the front of the line, a rat with a thick pair of glasses that magnified his eyes to half the size of his skull. He was inspecting a ferret’s union card as Santosa wheeled his way past the desk. “Excuse me sir,” the official said, handing back the ferret’s card. “Please wait your turn. This is official business.”
Santosa burped long and loud. “Wait my turn? Do you know who I am?”
The official held out his paw, his large unblinking eyes staring back at the toad. “Even if you’re The Boss himself, I need to see your union card,” he said, as the ferret slinked away as unobtrusively as he could. “You’re not passing through until I validate it.”
“This is ridiculous! I’m the Grand Pooh-Bah of Workplace Safety and Wages. I could have you crucified for this.”
The official remained unblinking, his paw still held forward.
Replacing his oxygen mask, Santosa rummaged throug
h his pockets. Louis could hear him grumbling that he had never been so insulted in all the thousands of years he had been at LeMont International Enterprises. After rummaging through his pockets for a second time, he hooked down his mask and said, “I seemed to have misplaced my card. I assure you my membership is current. Do me a favor and let me through. I’ll have my PA run it over to you as soon as we find it.”
“No card. No entry,” the official said.
“Look, I have a very important meeting to attend. You have to let me through.”
The official still wasn’t budging. Santosa drew another deep breath of oxygen. Then, suddenly realizing what needed to be done, he gestured with a flick of his head for the lizard to join him. Flash Freddy shoved his briefcase into Louis’ arms and hurried over. He and Santosa exchanged words before he removed a wad of cash from his pocket and put it in the official’s claw. “Just a little donation to the Union Fund,” he said.
The rat just stared at it with an expression that of What the hell is this?
Louis’ heart sank. The official handed back the cash and told Flash Freddy and Santosa that if they wanted to donate money then there was a correct protocol to follow. Forms had to be filled. Receipts needed to be dispatched. They couldn’t just hand over cash to anybody. There were cashiers at every branch of the Union Fund to handle this sort of thing.
Louis listened with disgust. Just another smalltime official on a power trip, he thought. He had seen it before on many occasions. At the bank. In the department store. Even at Madison Square Gardens. Anywhere some Mr. Goddamn Nobody could assert a bit of authority and power over someone else, even if it was just to stamp a form or check a ticket. It wasn’t about being right or wrong or following the correct protocol; it was about getting even with the world that had somehow offended them. He felt the same surge of outrage as when he had seen the newbie at the other end of the tunnel. Who in hell did this schmuck think he was? The goddamn Boss?
DeVille's Contract Page 9
