Skeletons (54 page)

I try to rise a little, and again she kicks me, that cartoon foot growing larger as it approaches my face. I think I grunt with pleasure.

"Let me tell you about myself," she says. I've never heard a person with so much venom in her voice, not even Carl Peters at Roundabout Records when he was reaming out Randy Pants and Brutus Johnson after they got caught with two nubile lovelies of, incidentally, my procurement, and who happened, it turned out, to be thirteen years old, a fact that threatened to end their careers. "Are you ready?"

I rise up on my elbows, wanting another kick. Mercifully, it comes. "Yes," I say, through the coppery taste of blood.

"Good. It's a simple story. There were lots more, billions more, just like it. I was fifty feet underground in a Canadian Treasury gold vault when your wonderful
skyplane
found me. Five months ago I had a husband in the trade commission and a nice house and two little boys. You can imagine what happened to all that when the skeletons came. By the time I reached the vault, there were four other people with me. We actually were in contact with three other cells and were making plans for guerrilla action. We'd already blown up a couple of their banks. We were making progress. By our estimate, two weeks ago, there were still thousands of humans left in the province. There were maybe fifty thousand in all of Canada. More than enough to keep fighting.

"Then a strange thing began to happen. One by one the cells began to disappear. Those that were in touch with us, those that were in touch with others. Like dominoes. And the dominoes began to fall in a line. And then there was just silence, until skeleton soldiers knocked on our door two days ago, then blew it in.

“Two of the three I was with committed something the underground came up with called real suicide. That's a double dose of cyanide that gets you once and then gets you again. The third was turned on the spot and told the soldiers where I was hiding.

"It took them a while to find me, but they got to me this morning and yanked me out of my hole. I was going to take my cyanide until they told me they were going to clean me up to meet a very important man, a human, who had done a lot for them, and who now had a very important mission, and needed to be comforted."

Again she kicks me. I lay there weeping.

"All I did was . . ."

"All you did was
what
?" she screams. She's thrown herself on the floor beside me now, holding the stiletto in her whitening knuckles, close to my face, yanking my spiky hair back with her other hand.

“. . . oh, Jesus," I whine, "all I did was survive . . ."

There comes a knock on the door. I hear
Pipeman's
voice, a bit of concern through the cheeriness.

"Everything okay in there,
Rog
?"

I pull in a snuffling breath and say, as normally as I can, "Everything's all right,
Pipeman
."

He pauses, then laughs. "Okay, buddy," he says. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

He's gone, and I'm looking up at
Adelaid
, who's kneeling over me, staring balefully down.

"What is it you're going to do for them?"

"I don't know ..."

"What's this 'important mission'?"

"Something to do with a vision Lincoln had, something to do with the last humans . . ."

One of her hands tightens very hard on the stiletto. The other pulls very hard on my hair. She bares her teeth, beautiful little straight things, capped and very white. One of those caps looks too high. I have an insane thought that she would have made a great advance lady in the music biz, a little chat, a few drinks, pull out the contract, and sign the acts for an incredibly low advance, she's got the right temperament.

And then the door booms in, showing the big boot of one of
Pipeman's
goons. Two of them jump into the room commando style and pump bullets into
Adelaid
. She drops her stiletto and staggers back, the blade grazing my throat as it falls to the rug. She's biting on something, staring straight at me, and I know what that bumpy cap in her mouth contains. She keeps staring at me as the bullets make her fold and then the cyanide gets to her.

She collapses, that little smile meant for me collapsing with her. Her body heaves and is still and then heaves again, and she drops to powder.

"Damn," one of the goons says.

Pipeman
strides into the room, pushing the goons aside. He's wrapped in a natty silk robe. He looks down at the pile of dust and says, "Damn," too. He turns to one of the goons and says, "Get a cleaning lady up here." Then he looks at me. "You okay,
Rog
?"

I look at him, still tasting blood, and run my finger lightly across the line where
Adelaid's
stiletto just cut a little slice of neck, not even drawing the red stuff. I look up at
Pipeman
, shudder, and say myself, "Damn."

And before you know it, after a few days of recovery, we're back in the sky again.

Only now things are different. First of all with
Pipeman
, whose bone babe, Maureen, not only left him for one of the goons, but who caught hell for the whole mess he got me into and is now on swab duty. I have to say I enjoy seeing his hound-dog look as he cleans the toilet and serves dinner to Cap'n Bob and me and the others. I'm especially grateful that he's been ordered not to talk to me. I'm afraid if he said anything, anything at all, I'd pry open the nearest triple-paned airplane window and jam him through it.

And secondly, things are different with me, too. Not that I'm freaked or anything, a couple of days in bed without
Adelaid
staring at me seemed to do the trick, I'm not even having nightmares about her anymore. I mean, I still don't know what got into me. Wanting her to kill me like that. I should see a shrink.

The coke and
Carta
Blanca help. I spend most of my time zipped now. Having mashed potatoes between the ears makes the days fly. Cap'n Bob doesn't seem to mind. He's had the whole rear cabin of the plane soundproofed while it was in for repairs, and now I can play
Pipeman's
sound system as loud as I want. The Cap'n was even so kind as to stock the room with a wall of CDs, everything from jazz to metal, a little gesture, he says with a solemn wink, for that conga line back in Rio.

Ah, loyalty.

But something is still wrong with me, because nothing—not the music, the drugs, the alcohol—seems to make me party-like. I mean, scientists say that even vegetables, like what I've tried to turn myself into, have feelings, right?

I think what I am is . . . lonely.

Is that the deal? That with all this humanity being peeled off the earth layer by layer, I'm feeling lonely for the human race? Is that a hoot, or what? I mean, what did the human race ever do for me, or anybody, except piss on 'em? Millions of years of evolution: and the end product is some two-legged geek who picks up the first long stick he sees and beats the geek next to him to a bloody pulp. And that geek is what I miss?

Fu me.

Throw on another CD, first one I grab. Close my eyes, take a slug of
Carta
Blanca, slam that disc into the player, turn up the volume—and what do you know. There's Brutus Johnson's
shoulda
-been-famous edgy guitar opening to the Vomits song "Beat Me," the perfect antidote. With any luck, as soon as this air gig is over I'll be working with the Vomits again, last I heard they're doing the bars in Vancouver, still mad at me over that Lone Tree thing. But when they see the deal I've got for them, they'll come around. Soon I'm hip-hopping around this little soundproofed universe, bouncing off the walls like a Spaulding rubber ball, yelling and screaming, practicing those licks on an air guitar while up front they send those
zonker
rays down to earth and dig the last humans out of Nome, Alaska, out of everywhere, for all I know, because I'm told that very soon, within the week in fact, there'll only be three, count 'em, three, human beings left in the whole
friggin
' world:

Beat me!

Yeah baby
baby
baby

Beat me!

You gotta
gotta
gotta
gotta

Beat me!

Hey daddy
daddy
daddy

Beat me. . . .

And so, four days later, earlier than schedule, it's "Mission Impossible" time. I feel like Peter Graves before he turns on the tape. Only instead of the tape I've got Cap'n Bob, and unfortunately he won't turn to smoke when the telling's over. He'll still be a pee-rick, ramrod straight, an arrow of American justice, ready to go anywhere, stick his head up any hole. Only now he's turned the piloting over to Cap'n Bob Jr., and is telling me, finally, what my little gig is in this thing.

"They're down there on the island somewhere!" he shouts. He's insisted that we hold this little historic meeting in the cabin, from which I've so long been banished. Lucky me. The jet whine on this baby is noisy as hell, and the cabin, I see to my surprise, is knee-deep in empty snack-food wrappers: cheese puffs, chips of every corn and potato kind and consistency, pretzels. Well, well, maybe Cap'n Bob ain't so ramrod after all. Now I know why he didn't want me up here, would have ruined his image.

"What you have to do!" Cap'n Bob shouts, his voice rising as Cap'n Bob Jr. makes the engines whine even louder by making a tight circle; we've been doing this for hours, tilting and turning, circling the little island below, one each turn passing the beached ship and the ragged, deflated balloon tethered next to it, making me dizzy and airsick. "What you have to do is get under cover immediately! We'll drop you on the far side of the island! When you make contact, get to a high point and advise over this radio!"

He hands me a thin, long thing, is trying to show me how it straps to my side under my shirt, but all I can focus on is one word he said.

"Did you say drop?"

"Yes! It's the only way! We can't land in water! And to get you to the mainland and then back out on a boat would take days! This is the way they want it!"

"No way, bubba," I say, but he's already got me in the John Wayne shoulder grip, two hands, looking straight into my eyes. I'm trying hard not to shiver, to concentrate on the Cap'n Bob shroud, his Cap'n Bob hat, and not the skeleton eye sockets under the visor.

"You're going down, with or without a parachute!" he says. "Your choice! I'll throw you out myself!"

The look in those eyes, the feel of that grip, and I believe him.

And so, two hours later, I'm in the back belly of this wonder plane, with
Pipeman
bowing and scraping in front of Cap'n Bob, sweeping the door in front of the hatch with his broom, opening the hatch himself, almost falling out in the process. Cap'n Bob, meanwhile, is explaining to me, very badly, how to make a parachute landing after jumping out of a huge jet. At least I can hear him back here, though I don't much like what I hear.

"You have to do
nothing
!" he says. 'The chute will open for you, after I attach the rip cord to this ring!" He shows me a big ring near the top of the hatch. "When you land, it'll be on beach sand, but try to bend your knees slightly, take the bump in a soft position! It'll cushion your fall!"

He's waiting for me to acknowledge all this gobble, but all I'm doing is looking out that hatch at that little island we're circling, and wanting to get sick.

"You understand?" Cap'n Bob says.

We're coming around toward that beach, and I just want to make them keep circling so I never have to jump. "I don't understand," I say.

"What?"

"Why don't they just turn these two?"

"This is the way the president wants it! He'll be here himself tomorrow!"

"I still don't get—"

A beep goes off and Cap'n Bob Jr.'s voice, lost in jet scream, comes over the intercom.

"Nearing target, Captain!"

"Right-o!" Cap'n Bob says. He turns to me. “Just find them, and radio back! Make contact, if you want! You're human, they won't mind. Keep them in sight until tomorrow morning. That's all you have to do!"

Worlds are spoken in that sentence. We both know that if I do this, Mr. L has promised certain things, and that those promises will be kept. And if I don't . . .

The intercom crackles.

"Over target, Captain!"

"Got it!" Cap 'n Bob says. To me he says, “Time to go, soldier!"

"Soldier, my crotch," I say. I'm so coked and drunk that it comes as a complete shock to find that I'm still so scared I want to relieve my bladder. "No fu-
ing
way.”

“It's D day, son!"

Without speaking, in a smooth motion I have to admire, Cap'n Bob, who keeps his promises, snaps my rip cord to the ring, swoops me up like a sack of beets and hoists me out into . . .

NOTHINGNESS!

Oh, God, I think, it's finally time to die. Only, I'm not doing much thinking at all. I'm spending all my time screaming and tumbling. I turn on my back and suddenly stabilize, seeing the hatch pulling away from me, a long thin rope like an umbilical,
Pipeman's
smirking face in the hatch opening.