Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (6 page)

Lilith smiled. “Sure. We
fucked like crazed alley cats.”

“
We... did?”

“
Maybe in a past incarnation,” she said. “Can I have a seat
or...”

Dionysus moved over in the
booth to make room. “You’re a Buddhist? The idea of
karma-as-ethical-imperative seems really childish to me. No
offense. Under whose authority am I forced to be reincarnated as a
shrew based on my actions in this life? And how can a particular
ant be such a ‘good’ ant that one day it gets to be joy of joys – a
human?”

Lilith watched him talk,
amused. “Is this how you hit on all the women?”

Loki snorted. “And
it
works
. Go
figure.”

“
Listen,” Jesus said. “I just sent the band out the door full
of enough alcohol to kill Leonard Cohen three times over. You want
to steal the stage, or argue about reincarnation?”

“
Finally, one of you says something I can fucking understand!”
Cody exclaimed, leaping out of his seat.

They approached the stage.
No one seemed to notice, or care. Cody, Dionysus and Jesus began
tinkering with the gear. Loki went off to find the mythical “Rich”
character. Lilith sat on the side of the stage, kicking her legs
back and forth. Dionysus noticed it, and nearly dropped his drum
sticks. Like the girl in his dream. That’s where he’d seen
her!

Before he could say
anything, she stood up and grabbed the mic. She had the bottle of
tequila in her other hand. “You guys ready?”

Jesus and Cody nodded.
Dionysus just looked stunned.

“
Let’s see if you know this one...Girls in white dresses with
blue satin sashes...snowflakes that stay on my nose and
eyelashes...Silver white winters that melt into springs...These are
a few of my favorite things...” Cody followed right along, savant
that he was. Jesus and Dionysus struggled at first but quickly
caught up, and before they knew it, they turned the
Sound of Music
into a
rampaging, psychedelic monster.

It took the audience
several minutes to realize that music was playing, but by the time
they figured it out, an unusual thing happened. Casual nodding
became whiplash-inducing headbanging. Dancers started peeling off
their clothes, which in several cases was a less than good thing. A
kissing couple fell on a table, rolled off and went right on to
fucking on the barroom floor. Drunks circle-danced around the pair,
scream-singing along with the chorus to
some
song, a song that had nothing
to do with the music that was playing. The bartender poured liquor
from bottles straight into open mouths.

And that was when things
got really crazy.

Eventually, the white trash
hurricane ran out of fuel and dispersed to the four corners of the
Earth. The bar was a disaster. Bouncers carried those who couldn’t
carry themselves, leaving them in the field behind the parking lot.
Several tables were splintered. Bottles and glasses smashed. Quite
a few laws broken. But no one was seriously injured, and most of
the damage was superficial.

During the show, Loki had
found Rich. He was sauntering out of what could have been his
office, or a closet. From the looks of it, he’d just finished doing
a whole lot of coke with a cheap whore. She was hanging on his arm
and had makeup smeared nearly down to her overabundant cleavage.
The smile on her face said she wasn’t minding her job at the
moment.

Loki figured things could
go either way. There was a full-scale mob in his bar, and a band
was playing that he hadn’t scheduled for the night. He braced
himself for the worst.

As it turned out, Rich was
in a benevolent mood. So, rather than working on an escape plan,
Loki casually introduced them all after the “show.”

“
I don’t know who the hell you are. But that was great,” Rich
said.

“
We’re Babylon,” Lilith said casually.

Loki eyed her. Dionysus and
Jesus shrugged simultaneously.

“
Don’t think I’ve heard of you. Anyhow, I’ve got to take
damages out...But I’ve got somethin’.” Rich said. He held out a wad
of bills that simply insisted on re-rolling themselves into little
cylinders when left alone.

“
Sorry about the mess,” Loki reiterated.

“
Are you kidding?” Rich laughed. His face was redder than
Santa Claus. “Our bar is cleaned out. Maybe some of it was on the
house, but I’ve never seen anything like that. And I was at the
original Woodstock. Fuck man! What a fucking party!” he clapped his
hands together.

“
I tend to have that kind of effect on people,” Lilith
said.

“
I can see... that.” He fumbled for something witty to say but
found nothing, so he just moved on. “We’ll be closing soon, though.
I’d offer you drinks, but...”

“
No worries,” Lilith said. When Rich sauntered off, she leaned
in and spoke conspiratorially. “That worked out nicely. You guys
want to go pro?”

“
Guys?” Jesus asked sharply.

“
Bipeds,” Lilith said. “Sorry.”

“
What else are we going to do?” Cody asked.

“
Looks like we’ve already got some gear,” Loki said, motioning
towards all the equipment the drunk band had left
behind.

“
Sure.” Jesus looked around the room, frowning. “I’m
hungry.”

Loki sighed and handed some
of the cash to Jesus.

Trevino was signing
paperwork for a clerk. The clerk was staring over his shoulder, his
mouth half-hanging open to reveal a set of buck teeth.

A children’s chorus stood
in front of the Motel, singing an off-key version of Annie’s
“Tomorrow.”

“
Length of stay?” the clerk finally asked.

“
Two days. When’s checkout?” Trevino answered. The clerk
didn’t respond. “Hey. When’s checkout?”

“
Eleven. ...Is that what they mean by mongoloid?”

Trevino finally looked over
his shoulder at the procession outside. “Mongol...?”

The children’s chorus was
set up on temporary bleachers. They were developmentally disabled
to various degrees, but all of them were unquestionably the
happiest children to butcher “Tomorrow.” Behind, a banner read “The
Holding Hands Chorus! WE LOVE YOU!” A small crowd of parents and
onlookers clustered around the children, waving miniature American
flags. Trevino also noticed a mobile broadcast HQ and the expected
entourage of press, cameramen, and interns that came along with
such a media travesty.

“
Downs. Not mongoloid,” Trevino said.

“
So what’s mongoloid mean?”

“
Downs. But it’s insulting.”

A technician in overalls
walked up to the mobile broadcast HQ from behind, opened the
driver’s door, and hopped in.

The clerk furrowed his brow
in thought. “So ‘mongoloid’ is like ‘nigger,’ but for
retards.”

Trevino fixed the clerk
with a level stare. Behind them, the mobile broadcast HQ rumbled to
a start. With looks of horror, the reporter and cameraman put down
their equipment and ran towards it, but were forced to dive to the
ground to avoid being crushed. Trevino barreled out of the door,
surveyed the scene, and stopped in his tracks.

The mobile broadcast HQ did
a tire-squealing turn around the bleachers, honking wildly. A horde
of children scattered, cried and applauded. Straightening out, it
ran over the camera equipment and accelerated to escape.

Trevino drew his weapon,
but struggled to get a clear shot. There were just too many
waffling, wailing fucking mongoloids. “IIIICE CWWWEAM TWUCK!” one
of them screamed, pathetically trying to give chase.

Jesus clung to the rear
door, waving a scimitar and bellowing incoherently as they drove
off.

“
Tranny cunt,” Trevino growled. The clerk raised his eyebrow
at him.

Stonesifer Autobody was
located in an old shipping warehouse just outside of Grand
Junction, Colorado, amidst a thick tangle of trees, brambles and
the rusted hulls of old cars and vans, strewn about like boats
after a tsunami.

From the outside, the
structure looked abandoned. Indeed, it was a rare night that the
thin tendrils of headlights would slither down the nearby street.
However, walk up through that brush and put your ear to the sliding
doors on the backside of the building, and you might hear the
whirring sound of pneumatic winches, or the huffing of hydraulics.
Inside was a sprawling complex of automotive gear, bunks built out
of wood from flats, and rusted barrels full of everything from
gasoline to ether.

Beside this garage was a
small office done up like any other red-blooded American mechanic’s
reception area: potted plastic plants, various muscle car and
pin-up magazines, a coffee pot that gurgled sludge and a fake,
conspicuously-stained leather sofa. “My Way Or The Highway” was
written on a giant placard, lashed, for no apparent reason, to a
bunch of steer horns and some empty bottles of Southern
Comfort.

The owner and sole
proprietor was surrounded by an array of electrical equipment and
half-read sci-fi novels.

The phone rang. His
secretary didn’t seem to know what the noise was. It had obviously
been a while since their last paying gig.

“
It’s the phone Courtney,” Gregor said, chuckling to himself
as his lazy eye drifted in her direction and caressed her young
frame. He whipped out a Camel Wide and lit it with his Zippo in the
same practiced motion. “Answer it, hon.”

“
Stonesifer Autobody: My Way Or The Highway, how can I help
you? Yes…yes… Okay, one moment. Phone call for you, sir…” Courtney
said, resting the receiver on her shoulder as she pressed on the
hold button with an artificial pink fingernail. “Sounds like he
might be drunk,” she whispered.

He took the phone. “Yo,” he
said gruffly.

She pursed her lips at him
quickly, winked and walked away. Nodding his head, he pulled off
his baseball cap and ran the back of his hand over his forehead,
leaving a black, sweaty smear in its wake.

“
Fuck,” he said. Then, “What? Oh, no, not you. Go on. I just
soiled my purdy self. Yep, yep. Alright, well, let me know the
budget and when you’ll need’r by and I’ll fix it up real
special...Someplace to lie low while I’m working on it? Fine.
Fuck.”

He pulled out a notepad and
frantically took notes. When the list was complete, he said, “Don’t
dare tell me how a bunch of good-fer-nothings like yerselves got
out of the loony bin. I don’t need to be an accessory to
God-knows-what. And in return I won’t tell you what I done with my
sexretary last night,” he grinned and hung up.

He wiped his hands with
the oil-spattered rag meditatively, as if the action helped him
think. It certainly didn’t make his hands any cleaner. The smear on
his forehead remained, forgotten. After a couple of minutes of
contemplation he looked up and started rummaging around piles of
equipment in the garage.

The call came at 4 o’clock
in the morning. Gregor flipped open his phone, still singing in a
falsetto along with his Journey ring-tone.

“–
Stop... believin’. Hold on to the feeeeelin’. For chrissakes,
it’s four in the morning and this is my personal line. I’ll sing
whatever the fuck I want to sing. You almost here with your
legally
acquired mobile
broadcast... You want to call it ‘The Behemoth’ and paint it like a
bumble-bee? You’re high, aren’t you? Yeah, I can do that.” He
closed the phone.

“
Put on the coffee, Courtney,” he yelled. “It’s gonna be a
long fucking night.”

They all stood under the
fluorescent lights in his office for a minute before anyone
spoke.

Dionysus broke into a grin
and hugged Gregor, clapping him on the back. “You smell like you’ve
been fucking chimpanzees for a week. As usual.” Though he was tall,
his forehead still knocked against Gregor’s chin.

“
You too. So, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Gregor whistled when they
walked into the garage. “This is like one of those
C-40-X2’s...Though I guess it’s a newer model. My thing is muscle
cars, you know.” He walked around it. “This vehicle is the fucking
tits. Bumble bee pattern, you said?”

Dionysus and Jesus nodded
eagerly. Loki sighed and shook his head.

Gregor laughed. “Talk about
hiding in plain sight, huh? Bunks for how many?”

“
Eight, more if we’re getting cozy,” Lilith said.

“
Weapons?”

“
Subtle,” Loki said. “If we have to use them, it’s probably
too late.”