The Axman Cometh (23 page)

"God—I'm going to pass out."

His eyes are fixed on the door at the landing a few steps away. Then he can't see it any more as he stumbles, slowly lifting a cramped leg. Don thinks, melodramatically, that he is losing consciousness. But it is only the torch, sputtering to a finish in Papa's fist. He hears, beyond a thickness of concrete wall, a rusty creaking, as if the elevator is slipping slowly down within its shaft. He drags himself up the remaining steps and falls against the metal door. Papa hauls him to his feet and out of the way.

"Ready?"

"Few seconds—catch my breath." Don seizes the cramped muscle below his knee, kneading it desperately. Papa is breathing hard too. Hell of a climb, truly. But they've done it. Too late, perhaps; the elevator may be getting away from them.

"Inside," Papa urges him.

"No light. What—will we do now?"

"Plenty of light," Papa says, cracking the door open. He is right. They are assaulted by
howlings
, a strong gust of heat and smoke.

"It's those fornicating
noddies
. They've set the whole sixth floor on fire."

Don, hopscotching, unable to put weight on his still-cramped right leg, goes in after Papa. The sixth floor contains the offices of the Knightsbridge Publishing Company, but they are a shambles. Erect shards of glass partitions appear blood-red in the grungy smoke. Fires blaze in half % dozen containers of the sort used by cleanup crews—large metal
cannisters
on wheels. Sprinklers have come on in one quadrant of the floor. There are animals everywhere, creatures in the clouded air, haphazard in flight or brawling viciously. Common barnyard pigs. Other, fanciful species Don couldn't name even if he'd had the collected works of Shannon Hill with him for reference. The din is amazing. Rap music from a jam box. Musical horns. Alarm bells. Shrieks of terror and laughter. The computerized scream they've been hearing all through the building.

But they no longer hear the furious trumpet of the bright-blue elephant, which is lying massively and motionless on its side twenty feet away in front of the battered, partly open elevator doors.

"
Elefunk
!" Don says, tearful in the smoke.

"Do you have money?"

Noddies
. A dozen of them, men and women, although Don has to look twice to recognize the sex differential. Men with fervid lips and a certain lean beauty, women who need to shave. They are all thin, tattooed, by one sort of needle or another, luminous as polluted fish except for the spokesman, who is Puerto Rican or West Indian or something, almost a head taller than others in his druggy band. Gold in his teeth and earlobes, hair in bronzy ringlets down to his shoulders. He's wearing a silver lame jacket and toreador pants. They advance slowly out of the smoke. A third of them with the shakes and mumbles. No threat. But the rest, including the spokesman, are crudely armed, with jagged fluorescent tubes, scissors, the black blade from a paper cutter.

"
Pleeeezzze
, some moneys? We
doan
hurt you. Very much."

"We don't have time for this," Papa warns unnecessarily. "Give them money."

Don has his wallet out. There's not much left. Papa takes the cash from him and flings it into the superheated air. The
noddies
fall all over themselves and the floor, scrambling for wadded bills, as Papa and Don try to edge by them to the elevator.

"Six dollars?
jSeven
?
Thass
all?" The spokesman rises up, glaring, snatching one of the dollars from the outstretched hand of a female, who whines at him. He knocks her flat with the back of his hand and brandishes his jagged fluorescent tube. "How much smack will that buy? Huh? You looking like a rich mans to me. Give me more, or I will
reep
your
fockeeng
heart out."

"I don't have any more. Here. See?" Don shows him his wallet. "Empty."

"You will be empty in the
cabeza
.
I am going to eat your
fockeeng
brains after I have
reep
out your
fockeeng
heart."

Having nothing else in his favor, Don responds by lifting the toy sword. Most of them guffaw at this little joke, except for one
noddie
, on all fours, who bites him in the ankle like a berserk terrier. He has no teeth, but his gums are cast iron. Don shakes him off anxiously and backs away. He and Papa hear, despite the uproar, the sound of the descending elevator.

"
Noooo
!" Don wails. But the end of the fluorescent tube is inches from his face, slowly forcing him to the wall and away from the elevator doors.

"Papa! God's sake, do something before this maniac—"

Papa frowns, then puts two fingers between his teeth and whistles as loudly as if he's calling home.

One of
Elefunk's
leafy ears gives a twitch; her trunk moves like a viper in a basket, curling upward into the black smoke. The
noddie
who has been leaning against
Elefunk's
flank feels the
tremoring
in the large body and looks around slowly.

"Salvador—"

"Shut the
fock
up, man; I got work to do here."

Don dodges a feint toward his face. Papa whistles again. The
noddie
with the paper- cutter blade makes an ill-advised move from the side. Papa falls into a boxer's stance and begins to weave and bob. Then his right hand flicks out, once, twice, speed and power like the old days when he was heavyweight champ of the literary world; and the
noddie
goes spinning to the floor with a brightly
tomatoed
nose.

Don is not so quick. The broken tube in Salvador's hand takes a small bite out of his cheek. Don loses his balance and stumbles against Papa.

"Damn it, Carnes!"

"Sorry."

The
noddies
are circling now, little pinpricks of eyes, clothes that were never new. Pressing in. More broken tubes and paper spikes, some with author's letters still attached, are thrust at them; Don covers his head and face with both arms as an ear is savaged.

Behind the
noddies
Elefunk
rises with a certain exhausted majesty, trumpeting like the solo part in a marching hymn. She stands, perhaps, eight feet at the shoulder. Small for an elephant, but not in this place. She is so wonderfully blue she is almost
irridescent
: like the Gulf Stream, to Papa's artistic eye, on a hot, calm, cloudless afternoon off Bimini. Her head is split above one eye from the battering of the elevator doors that put her down in the first place; blood trickles from the swollen eye. The other eye is so sad you want to cry with her.

"Give it to them, Beauty! We have an elevator to catch!"

The trunk uncurls and seizes a would-be runaway, stopping him in midstride, lifting him straight and true right through a ceiling panel of acoustical tile, leaving him up there in a welter of plumbing and ductwork with only his skinny, writhing legs visible. Another
noddie
is lashed across the butt and double- somersaults over the floor into the thickest cloud of smoke. Blood rolls down one side of
Elefunk's
face, tears down the other. Papa cheers, then seizes the distracted Salvador by the lapels of his clinquant jacket and begins bumping him with his burly chest, back and back until the trunk of the elephant comes snaking down over Salvador's shoulder.

"All yours, Beauty."

Salvador is lifted with a shriek and held suspended for a few moments while
Elefunk
makes a decision about him. Then she plods across the floor to where a
cannister
is ablaze and drops him butt-first into it. He fits like a cork in a bottle. He screams and screams.

"The fire will die from lack of oxygen," Papa says. "But his balls should be well- roasted by then."

"The elevator, Papa!"

"I know.
Elefunk
, help us!"

The blue elephant, weeping buckets, returns, her large head rolling unsteadily.

"The doors," Papa says, lifting one floppy ear to speak directly and without interference.
Elefunk
blinks her good but tearful eye. She has long, curly lashes.

"For Shannon," Don says passionately.

The thick metal clamshell doors, heavily dented by
Elefunk's
battering, are inches apart. Blackness beyond.
Elefunk
raises her trunk and inserts it into the opening. She trembles. Then she brings all of her strength to bear on the lower door, forcing it down an inch, another inch.

"Oh, Beauty," Papa says sympathetically, her ear still in his hand. "Thou art Magnificence. Thou art truly the Great One of all
tembu
.
I celebrate thy Strength and Spirit. There is no greater Beast. You will do this thing. You are the best of the many brave creatures of the forest and plains. God knew what he was doing when he made you. A little farther, please. He made many with cunning and heart, but only noble
temba
has a soul."

With a shudder and roar the big door slams down.

"Carnes! Hop aboard!"

"Papa, it's not there! The elevator's not—"

"I know that! I hear it moving. It's down there in the shaft, you have to jump!"

"Oh, now, wait a—"

"Jump!"  
if

Something smooth and hard like the fleshy nozzle of a fire hose thumps him solidly in the small of the tack and Don goes flying out into the gusty cold void of the elevator shaft, somehow not tumbling, just falling feet first for what seems twice the time for a death sentence. In reality only a couple of seconds pass before he lands, hard but on his feet, on the roof of the slowly descending elevator.

"Look out below, Carnes!"

Don scrambles between greasy vibrant cables, looking back and up as Papa jumps and
Elefunk
trumpets a farewell. Safe for the moment, Don thinks bitterly of himself,
Didn't have the nerve. As usual. Well, shit. When are you going to get it together
? Because the
noddies
were nothing but feckless clowns compared to what he must soon face: the Axman himself. And how long can he count on Papa's courage and resourcefulness to back him up?

Still holding on to that stupid toy sword. Almost like a pacifier. He looks at Papa in the meager light from the sixth floor, now more than twenty feet above their heads.

"What—what do we do now?" Hates himself for having to ask.
Use your canoodle, Carnes.
He has an inspiration before the winded Papa can reply.

"There must be a hatch cover; some sort of emergency exit from the—"

The elevator is moving perceptibly faster.

"Found it!"

The hatch is about three feet square. But he can't locate a handle, and around the edges there is grease and grime, the accumulation of decades, hard as old caulking. He would need a pry bar to get the cover off. He looks up in frustration and fear, a trickle of blood on one cheek.

"Papa, I—"

Papa's eyes lock yellow in the dark shaft. He stares
unwinkingly
at Don.

"Use the sword."

"It's a toy!"

The elevator is gathering speed; Don has to swallow his heart, rude knocking thing, and swallow it again like a wet apple from a tub. He looks down, then jabs sharply with what is left of the point of the plaything sword to demonstrate his feelings of
futilty
. And somehow he finds a soft spot, the blade slips in between the hatch cover and the elevator roof. He bears down reflexively on the handle of the sword and feels the hatch move up.

Papa reaches over with both hands and hurls the cumbersome hatch cover away.

"Go!"

Don thinks,
Axman.
It's enough to fry the roots of his hair. And he thinks,
Shannon.
So this it. His moment of truth. He can feel Papa's breath on him, as steamy and intimidating as a bull's breath. He looks down into the elevator for a long moment, but he can't see anything. He swings his feet into the hole, takes a deep breath, lets it out in a full- throated shriek of bravado as he drops.