Last God Standing (20 page)

“I don’t believe in the death penalty. It’s too easy. It lets horrible people off the hook. You say you killed a dozen people and barbecued their pubic hair? Don’t worry, Adolph, you can get… the Death Penalty. We get all crazy about who’s ‘Tough On Crime’. Reactionary psychopaths have dragged the country so far away from anything resembling common sense that now a politician running for President who doesn’t unequivocally support the Death Penalty can’t get elected. And it’s all just so other politicians can say, ‘Senator Joe Bob is soft on crime. Didn’t ya hear? Joe Bob is soft on crime. He’s SOFT… on CRIME!’ Which is really political doubletalk for, ‘Senator JoeBob wants Afro-Mexican crack dealers to break into your house, steal your guns, rape your wife and teach your children French while giving your grandmother a gay abortion. For free.’”

< Audience reacts >

“And since most politicians are self-serving egomaniacs who want to become multi-millionaires by sucking face with their corporate sponsors while they’re in office… no one ever questions that assumption.

“So we get politicians who proclaim that they’re ‘Tough On Crime!’ And what’s the best way to prove that you’re Tough On Crime? By supporting the Death Penalty, that’s what. There’s only one problem: it’s all crap. The Death Penalty is racist. Compared to whites, African-Americans and Latinos are executed in numbers severely disproportionate to their representation in the general population. Hey, John and Jane Q Public, when it comes to unfair state-sanctioned murder… We’re Number One!”

< Audience laughs. Catcalls >

“THE DEATH PENALTY discriminates against the poor. It’s like scurvy, cheap leather and bad sex: rich people never get it. Then again, these inconsistencies have left convicted mass murderers with nearly limitless abilities to appeal. You can kidnap somebody, cut up their cat, feed it to them before you kill them, record the whole thing in hi-def video and post it on YouTube and still have the Right of Appeal. You can outlive the judge who sentenced you, the prosecutor who indicted you and the stenographer who banged her fingers against that goofy little keyboard – does anybody really believe they’re taking down everything that’s said during a trial? That’s the biggest injustice of all – you can outlive all those people and never see the inside of a death chamber, while the system figures out a way to swing another appeal. So
bon appetit
, Adolph: we just want to show everybody that we’re TOUGH ON CRIME without actually doing anything about it. I. Oppose. The Death Penalty.

“However, I do support scaring the holy hell out of violent people. Let’s take the technology used to make those stupid
Twilight
movies and actually create something useful. Let’s turn our talent for manipulation to manipulating the people who actually need it: violent people who subject us to teenaged vampire movies. Don’t groan: those
Twilight
movies were so bad, homeless crack whores ran away from advance screenings. Seriously, the studio invited hundreds of crack whores and their pimps to free screenings in Chicago. Because they were cold and hungry, the studio thought they’d shove some free popcorn down their throats, wash a little Coca-Cola over their bloody gums, then the crack whores would be disposed toward favorably reviewing their movies. Instead the crack whores bolted like runaway slaves leaving Mississippi.”

< Laughter. Groans >

“What if we made an announcement that we had reinstated the Death Penalty for rapists, murderers, child molesters and right wing talkshow hosts… you know, violent offenders: no appeals, no plea bargaining, just… if you’re convicted of one of these crimes… pow! It’s the electric chair, or lethal injection or an endless
American Idol
marathon. But here’s the trick: instead of killing you, we just knock you out. When you wake up… you’re still alive. ‘There’s been a mistake,’ you think. ‘Those idiots screwed up. Whoohoo!’

“But then you pass a mirror on your way to strike back at society and you see that something’s changed: you’ve been turned into a woman. Or a child. Or an old person: whatever you did to your victim, we use all our technology to turn you into a version of that victim; strip your muscles, shave down your bones and shoot you full of estrogen. Then we put you in a trailer home with a week’s worth of crystal meth and a violent boyfriend. If you did anything to a child, or an old person, we give you Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria. You know, the aging disease? It turns healthy kids into sick old people almost overnight. It makes you weak from heart disease, rapid muscle and bone deterioration, and constant pain. Then we sell you to a sweatshop in Mexico or Singapore or Waco, or just rent you to those two idiots from
John
&
Kate Plus 8
. I guarantee you… in five minutes you’ll regret everything you ever did in your whole life. And you won’t have to worry about dying because anybody stupid enough to actually kill you will have the same thing done to them!”

< Audience
cheers. Applauds >

“We’re not living up to our potential, people. Over millions of years we’ve evolved these huge brains; the biggest brains of all the primates, among the biggest brains in the animal kingdom; big brains that can solve big threats: world hunger, climate change, Regis Philbin. But the problems we spend all our attention on? Gay marriage… pointless wars and Google Waves…

“We can do better, people. That’s all I’m saying.

“We can do better.”

“That… was… awesome!”

Yuri was beaming. Jeff Corroder and Ted McFarlane were beaming. Even Corroder’s assistant, Mitsuko Leavenworth was beaming.

“You killed,” Yuri hissed as we walked back to McFarlane’s table, near the back of the Ha-Ha Room’s bar. He was gripping my forearm so tightly my fingers were going numb. “McFarlane thinks you’re the next George Carlin.”

“You were great, Lando,” Corroder fluted.

“Better than great,” McFarlane said, too loudly. “You’re a rocket! An honest-to-God, mother-humpin’ star!”

Corroder wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into a bear hug. I dangled there with my face pressed into his manbreasts, his unnatural strength compressing my ribcage. Just when I was about to pass out, Corroder sat me down and thumped my shoulders with his ring studded paws. I reached for my inhaler.

“What’re you drinkin’ tonight, killer?”

“Coke,” I said. “Just a Coke…”

“And Rum!” Yuri cried, producing a flask. “No point in drinking Coke without the rum!”

“No rum,” I said. Surabhi’s flight was due in around noon the next day, and I wasn’t about to risk a hangover. Corroder was already waving down the bartender. McFarlane sprang up from his seat, bounded around the table and wrapped me up in another bear hug.

“Let me tell you why you’re gonna be a huge effing star. One word? Everyman. You are the Everyman for the new millennium, Lando. You’re Richard Pryor and George Lopez and Dave Chappelle all rolled into one.”

“And Carlin!” Yuri said. “Don’t forget Carlin!”

“George… Effing… Carlin…” McFarlane laid his left hand over his right pectoral muscle, a gesture I interpreted to mean he was speaking from his heart. “I loved that guy. The greatest comic since Mark Twain. Honest to God, man… I just…”

McFarlane actually welled up. He reached across to the table next to us and grabbed a napkin from a young blonde’s lap.

“Sorry,” he said, huskily. “I’m just so passionate about the power of comedy to make a difference in people’s lives. Sometimes I get so full of it I feel like I could explode and splatter myself over George Carlin’s effing grave. You feel me?”

“It’s OK,” I said. “No reason to be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? You think I’m effeminate, don’t you, Lando? That it? You think McFarlane’s a big flamer?”

I laughed. McFarlane didn’t. He glared at me, his steel gray eyes suddenly as cold as a frost giant’s netherhole.

“Are you calling me a fag, Lando?”

“No!”

McFarlane’s face turned orange, then bright red. Then he punched me in the stomach.

“I’m just messin’ with ya! Cop a squat, you crazy schmuck. Drinks are on Uncle Ted!”

Corroder came back carrying a tray loaded with drinks.

“Ted’s ADHD with a mild schizoid/rage disorder: Who ordered the rum and Coke?”

I sipped from my drink, which was strong but harmless enough.

Just one. It’s a celebration. You deserve it.

“A toast!” McFarlane said, including the patrons and comics around us. “Git ’em up, you daffy bastards!”

Everyone raised their glasses. Yuri was beaming again. And why not? If this venture were a hit it would make us both rich. Mitsuko Leavenworth’s right hand had secreted itself somewhere beneath the table, presumably in Yuri’s lap.

“To the hip new star of Fox’s newest late night talk experience (to be named later): Lando Cooper!”

People applauded. Some of them meant it.

Over the next four hours, several comics made their way over to the table, every one of them eager to lap up some reflected network slobber, or at least free drinks. Goldie Kiebler, the horribly vital owner of the Ha-Ha Room, plopped her bones into my lap and loudly proclaimed to everyone within earshot that she’d plucked me out of the ghetto. She may have tried to put her tongue in my ear. Yuri sang Swedish war songs between bouts of French-kissing Mitsuko like her tonsils held the antidote for a fast-acting nerve toxin. Corroder and McFarlane talked time slots and made bets about which of them could nail one of the female comics staggering around the bar like burning zombie ragdolls. Everyone was happy. I was happy. Everything was going my way.

Of course that’s when everything fell apart.

Gods don’t dream. Since beginning my mortal life, what dreams may come, came not from my subconscious, but from the prayers of believers. They came to me in flashes; shards from millions of lives, prayers filtering up from the Eshuum. Before I was hospitalized, that’s what I thought might be the cause of my headaches: all those emotions, all that mortal need sizzling through my overworked human brain.

Lately, the prayer-streams had been growing fainter, dwindling every day. In some places the volume of prayers was increasing – Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia and the Middle East, the American South – but on the whole, the collective cry of humanity had grown fainter over my incarnated lifetime. People were simply too busy, too angry or too educated to worry about what I was up to. Sometimes, toward the end of it all, it was even fairly common for me to get a decent night’s sleep.

The night before the apocalypse was not one of those nights.

Maya’s Prayer

Maya Otsunde is walking down the road toward the refugee camps that line the border between her country and Burundi. Refugees are flooding over the border, fleeing genocide in their homeland to seek safety in hers. But her people are already taxed to the limit by their own hardships. Drought and famine and war have made her village a Hell on Earth.

She has decided, after her meeting with God, that she must take her destiny into her own hands. She walks toward the camps, where (she believes) she will find men who know how to make a difference. As she walks into the camp – called Showland by the cruel guards who carry machine guns – she notes the stares of the people who notice her, a tall, brown girl with the bearing of a ballet dancer, her spine straight, her hair pulled back into twin cornrows. She ignores the leering, desperate men and the hungry women and children. There are thousands of tents lining both sides of the road, but she knows where to find the man she seeks. As she approaches the largest tent, she allows herself one small prayer.

“I know you have other work, God. But I ask of you this one thing: give me the strength to look Barzuli in the eye. Please grant me that much strength and I will never bother you again.”

She opens her eyes. She has reached the tent. She is standing at the entrance to the sprawling pavilion that the warlord Hamza Barzuli has made for himself and his men. The laughter of hard men issues from inside the tent, and the sound of someone jacking a shell into the chamber of a shotgun. Maya knows these sounds. Her brother was killed by the boy soldiers from Burundi last year. But what she wants from Hamza is more powerful than any gun. What she wants will assure her place in Heaven. If Barzulli accepts her offer.

The laughter comes again. Maya thinks of her family, her mother and sisters starving back in her village. She thinks of the American army base a few miles up the road, and she surprises herself by pulling back the tent flaps and peering into the darkness.

“Hello?” she says. “Colonel Barzuli?”

Maya holds her head high. She must show no fear: she has met the American God and taken him to task. She has received a promise from her new God, a God whose coming has been foretold by several wise men in her village. Her meeting with the old American God confirmed the rightness of her decision. She will bring Word of the coming God to the Americans occupying her country. She knows she will be rewarded in her next life.

“I’ve come to volunteer.”

Unafraid, Maya smiles and steps into the darkness.

“You’re late, Romeo.”

I opened my eyes. The light of a bright morning shone in through my bedroom window. I stretched, luxuriating in the feeling of triumph lingering from the night before. Yuri and I agreed that he would negotiate my network deal. I’d never had any kind of “deal” before. Now I had a wallet full of business cards.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,”
Connie said. She was even younger than the last time I’d seen her, appearing as a young girl in white deerskins, barely seven years old and sitting crosslegged atop my old TV.
“How are we, on this lovely day the gods have made?”

“Connie, even you can’t bring me down today. You know why? Because… I’ve got the whole world in my hands.”

“Lando…”

“I got the whole wide world in my hands–”

“You’re late.”

“I got the great big world in my–”

“Did you hear me?”

“…haaaannnnn… What did you say?”

“You’re late. Surabhi’s plane?”

“No!”

I scrambled out from under my
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
comforter and fell out of bed.

“What… What time is it?”

“Too late for you to be on time.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I’m an Earth Goddess, not your personal secretary. And speaking of my duties around here. We need to talk.”

“Not now, Connie.”

I stripped off my clothes. It wasn’t hard: I’d passed out in them three hours earlier.

“Lando… I’m leaving.”

“Fine, go. We can talk when you get back!”

“I’m not coming back, Lando.”

“Connie, please!”

The alarm clock on my night table read 11.31am. I’d slept through the alarm. Surabhi’s plane was due at O’Hare Airport in half an hour.

“Late!”

I’d called Herb and asked for the day off, intending to spend it with Surabhi. After I volunteered a day’s pay, Herb had given me his blessings. I showered, dressed quickly and ran downstairs still dripping.

“Late!”

“You can do this, Cooper. You’re the Embodiment of Cosmic Conciousness.”

A loud thump interrupted my train of thought. I slammed on the brakes. The Jaguar rocked to a halt inches from the walker of our neighbor, Gus Bankhead, the old “confirmed bachelor” who lived in the immaculate Colonial across the street with his godson. Bankhead hammered the legs of his walker against the Jaguar’s trunk.

“Watch where you’re going, you black idiot!”

I forced myself to breathe deeply. As Bankhead, still swearing, hobbled down the sidewalk I checked both directions, made sure the street was clear, then pulled onto our street and headed west. As I made my way onto the interstate, drivers in nearby cars took pains to drive up alongside Barbara’s car.

“Speed limit’s fifty-five, jackass!”

I made my way to the airport.

Maybe it was the expectant expression on my face that made the gate agent at the Transworld Charter terminal take pity on me. Maybe it was the roses. Or the sign I was holding:

Surabhi Moloke… Will U Marry Me?

I’d been standing at the gate, waiting for Surabhi and her family to emerge from the closed jetway for nearly an hour before the gate agent noticed me. I’d checked my Blackberry scheduler a dozen times, checked the charter airline’s website and learned that their flight from Heathrow had departed on schedule. But nearly twelve hours later, there was no sign of them. And the gate agent, a wispy woman with mousy hair and a pronounced overbite, was staring at me again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Who are you waiting for?”

I told her. She typed into her computer and waited for a response. Her eyes widened, then she lifted one trembling hand to her lips. Her dismay only grew worse when she read my sign.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” she whispered.

Before I could answer, the mousy woman turned and dashed into a little office behind the counter. She reemerged almost immediately with another person in tow, a tall, Asian woman wearing a black suit. The mousy agent was standing on tiptoe, whispering into the dark-suited woman’s ear. The dark-suited woman eyed me suspiciously, then nodded.

“My name is Naomi Penn,” she said. “I’m a customer service representative for Transworld Charter. May I please ask your name?”

I told her my name.

“Oooh, like the movie character. Billy Dee Williams? How wonderful for you.”

“Is there a problem?”

“May I inquire as to the nature of your relationship to the Moloke family, Mister Dee Williams?”

“What’s going on? Are you with the UN or…?”

But Naomi Penn was staring at my sign. It must have looked like I was using it to fend her off. I shrugged it behind my back, suddenly embarrassed without knowing why.

“You are engaged to Surabhi Moloke?”

“Yep,” I said. “Well, I hope to be in the next few minutes. Ahhh… where’s the plane?”

The mousy agent offered a throat-clearing cough behind the counter. Our eyes met, and she quickly looked down at her flashing screen.

“Mister Dee Williams… will you please follow me?”

Naomi Penn turned on one heel and walked toward the counter.

I repeated my name as we passed the nervous agent and went into the little office behind the counter.

“It’s Cooper, by the way. Was the flight delayed?”

Naomi Penn sat at a little desk and gestured me toward the small chair opposite it. “Please sit.”

“What’s going on?”

“Mister Cooper, the Molokes’ plane has been lost.”

“Lost? Lost where?”

Penn’s smile never wavered, but her fingers scooped up a silver letter opener from her desk and began to fumble with it.

“Mister Cooper, there’s been a terrible incident. The Molokes’ charter lost contact with Heathrow shortly after take-off. The plane went down somewhere over the Atlantic, we believe between…”

“Wait a minute… Went down… what do you mean ‘went down’?”

Penn’s hands kept bending the blade of the letter opener, as if she could twist it into a different shape.

“The Molokes’ plane went down off the coast of Ireland sometime this morning, sir. A Royal Naval vessel was in the area where the plane was lost. They are conducting search and rescue operations now.”

“You’re telling me that–”

“Apparently a good deal of wreckage has already been located. As of this moment, I’m terribly sorry to inform you… that there were no survivors.”

“No survivors…?”

“I am so sorry for your loss, Mister Cooper...”

Search and rescue.

“Because of the sensitive nature of Mrs Moloke’s work and the intervention of US, British and Irish authorities, no formal announcement has been released to the media until any criminal activities can be ruled out, but…”

There were no survivors.

“…all efforts are being made…”

No survivors.

“…a counselor provided by the airline to help you in this terrible time…”

No…

“Mister Cooper… is there anyone I can contact?”

Survivors.

“Mister Cooper?”