Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End

by James Curcio

  “I dub thee Behemoth!” Lilith cracked a tequila bottle on the armored side of the vehicle.

  Dionysus sadly watched its contents drip to the floor.

  They were out of Colorado in a matter of hours, brazenly taking route 70 straight out of Grand Junction, into the the red bluffs and dusty plains of Utah. After several hours of stifling humidity, the water broke and unleashed a torrential downpour. Loki grumbled something about Noah's Ark as he cut speed. Uncommon weather had become common. He was sure that if he turned on the radio, there would be flash flood warnings on every AM station that wasn't presently preaching fire and brimstone, damnation and $19.95 salvation.

  Dionysus gazed through one of the windows by his bunk as he spoke into his hand-held recorder. He spoke quietly but with gravity, like a coke addict after a long night out.

  “...that's in the past now,” he was saying. “The myth of the American dream. The great American novel. The... even the word American now evokes a shudder. And that is an unbelievable loss. We all know something our parents didn't in the 60s: we've been had.

  “Now, it is like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering momentum and power. Even gentle footfalls can start an avalanche, given the proper conditions. Once it gains enough velocity, anything in its path will be crushed. Crushed by the weight of a myth. An idea.”

  “What are you rambling about?” Loki asked over the intercom, somehow able to make out his spit-fire monologue over the rumble of the engine. “Reality isn't up for grabs. It's real.”

  Dionysus got up and sat in the passenger seat. “That was really creepy, man. How did you hear me?”

  “I'm half German Shepard. But seriously, explain yourself.”

  “You're one of those people that think religious war comes from innate biology? Or a conflict over resources?” Dionysus asked.

  “I suppose,” Loki said. “I don't know if I'd be so pretentious about it...”

  “The hell you wouldn't. What I am saying is that it is a war of ideas. People can go their own ways, let well enough alone. But many people aren't content with that. They identify with an idea so strongly that it's as if the idea possesses them. God's chosen are victorious. It is war.”

  Loki narrowed his idea at Dionysus. “I've got to think. This idea makes me really uncomfortable. But I'll pretend for a minute that you're not just, you know...”

  “Nuts?” Dionysus asked, smirking.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Memes are how the evolved wage war. Ontological terrorism, where have you been, man?”

  “Keeping your ass out of prison. Reality doesn't give a shit about our ideas.”

  “You're talking about natural law. I'm talking about...personal myth. We are how we represent ourselves. I'm not trying to plumb the dark recesses of Plato's cave. I'm trying to unchain Prometheus.” Dionysus turned off his recorder and tapped it with a smile. “And this is how I'm going to do it.”

  “With an MP3 recorder?” Loki asked.

  “It actually records in WMV,” Dionysus said with a frown.

  “Ugh,” Loki said, lighting a smoke and waving him away. “Stop talking to me.”

  Through the “movie screen” of the porthole windows that lined the sides of the Behemoth, day and night blended together, much as the transformations of landscape and climate outside showed a never ending menagerie of a nation struggling to maintain an illusory status quo.

  They were, for the time being, like kids with a bunch of new toys. New toys, and Lilith's conspicuously flexible cash flow.

  Writing and rehearsing the material for a first album was a blast under such circumstances.

  Of course, life on the road wasn’t without its snags. It had been raining hard, maybe a week or two since they had left Grand Junction. As was often the case, Loki was driving. Lilith was riding shotgun, tapping away on her netbook. There was a crackle in the air, like walking into the room right after an argument.

  Lilith snorted. “Why is this still a question?”

  Loki dragged on his cigarette. “It’s posture. Strategy. You can’t be fugitives and rock stars. You can’t book the Hollywood-fucking-Bowl–”

  “But you can drive a giant, armored bumblebee,” Lilith said.

  “Fair point. Though that was against my strong, and might I say correct, urging to the contrary. Ahem. But any venue big enough to be worth the risk is–” Loki drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “It’s what? If this was about getting clear, you know damn well none of it–”

  “Shut up,” Loki said.

  “–would be... What did you just say to me?”

  “I’m thinking. You like it when I think.” He continued drumming his fingers.

  Lilith swallowed a retort and continued typing.

  “All right. Yes, in theory you can be both fugitives and rock gods. But in practice it’s impossible.”

  Lilith shrugged. “Try me.”

  “Resources first. Who’s footing the bill?”

  “I am. Give me your vision here, maestro.”

  “Swarm, concentrate, disperse. Flash mobs, but fucking huge. Decentralization...” Loki thought for a minute.

  “Mother Hive Brain!” Dionysus piped in, from his bunk. “The hive acts without any discernible decision making–”

  “–at any level. Yeah, yeah. But that was a joke,” Loki said. “Hold on. Let me finish a thought for Christ’s sake.”

  Lilith finished typing, and turned her netbook to face Loki. He was being recorded. “Go on.”

  “You’re a part of it. Find your six best friends, determine your level of commitment. Stay in touch. Take turns listening. Word goes out from group to group, you pass it around. Call, tweet, write, lipstick on a mirror, I don’t give a fuck. As long as someone else is listening and tells their six friends. You six may get the word that you will help people park, you six deal with renting latrines, you six to–”

  “Latrines?” Lilith asked.

  “Six per cell, each cell notifies two others. How many people in six iterations?”

  Lilith laughed. “You know, I like how you think I can do that.”

  “Don’t, you. I’m on to your shit,” Loki said.

  “Tens of thousands or millions, depending on how you figure it. And you’re also assuming...how would you put it? No signal degradation.”

  “Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics,” Loki said, cryptically.

  “Have you served yet?” Lilith asked impatiently.

  Loki’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. The ‘big idea’ levity had drained from his face.

  “No.” He took a breath. “Six tell six where and when, six times, and you’ve got your Hollywood Bowl.”

  “You missed your calling, you know that?” Lilith asked.

  Loki finally smiled. “You’d miss our little talks.”

  About a week later, the Behemoth wound its way through a tiny dirt road running through a densely knit patch-work of forest and open field. The GPS voice spoke in its usual monotone. (John Cleese had gotten old after the first thousand miles.) “Make a left 300 yards ahead.”

  “There is no left 300 yards ahead,” Loki said.

  “Trust to your machine overlords,” Dionysus said.

  “I think it means we’re supposed to go off-roading,” Jesus said. “Look.” There was an even smaller dirt road, barely larger than a path, that cut off up ahead.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “No,” Lilith said. “This looks right to me.”

  They bumped their way down the smaller dirt path, and it opened up into a field. They were surrounded by other cars, vans and tents. Teens ran around mostly naked, their bodies a mess of glow-paint occult glyphs and LED lights.

  They rolled through another patch of trees, and then into another field, with a barn and farmhouse at its furthest corner. The barn was surrounded by an enormous crowd of people.

  “Lilith...” Loki said.

  “Your plan
, pal. I just ran with it.”

  There were six sweaty kids waiting to help them set up gear on stage. As the speaker walls and drum kit were being assembled, the crowd began changing “BAB-A-LON! BAB-A-LON! BAB-A-LON!”

  “You could’ve made seven figures a year on Madison avenue, you know that?” Loki asked Lilith.

  “I suppose. That wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”

  In near darkness, the band waited. Cody silently tuned his guitar. The lights of the tuner and the rest of his gear blinked ominously in the background. Dionysus fidgeted with his sticks. Jesus, her bass hanging low between her legs, was inspecting her makeup in a small hand mirror.

  Lilith waited before her cue, her slender hands resting on her hips, her weight on the balls of her feet, her lips twisted into a victorious smirk, drinking down the howl of the audience like it was Bordeaux. The lights hit, and then the adrenaline.

  The speakers struggled to keep pace with the wild ululation of the crowd. Collectively, terrifying vibrations rocked the barn to its foundations. Strobe and laser-flashes rippled through the darkness. Bodies and light seemed to twine around, between, and through each other.

  By the second song, a patch of baseball-cap wearing fans standing near the front were bowled over by a group of women who crawled on-stage, clustering around Lilith. It seemed a staged part of the performance. She was overrun by the throng; esurient mouths licking, gnawing, biting at her curves and soft skin. She crawled out of the tangle, catching the pick-up for the next song.

  Eventually, the performance came to a crashing end, but the party continued raging as if it had never stopped. Dionysus sat, staring at the drumsticks in his hand.

  The roof of the venue drifted away, painted increasingly dark shades of slate-blue by strata of smog whirling past. The snakelike peninsula of Baja and the curve of California were both swallowed by clouds and silken shadow. The Earth herself was a bobbing speck of dirt caught in a tide of darkness. Blazing suns, each the size of a thimble in the ocean, hurtled away into blackness. There was a fluttering in the void, like stitches in a sweater.

  No, it was a cell. An army of cells. A hand.

  My hand.

  Lilith watched Dionysus stare at his hands. He was clearly deep in the grips of some revelation. It was possible that the incredibly potent mescaline she’d slipped into his canteen was also having some effect.

  “Could I dive back into them and find the Universe?” Dionysus asked her.

  “Someday I’ll show you. But not now. Now, we play.”

  “The audience is a thousand eyed beast. It is mad and starving for more, and we are just the empty puppet who dances at its pleasure. We feed one another, one and yet two, a baby suckling at its mother’s ripe breast. All pain, all need, all separation is absolved in this symbiosis.”

  Lilith pulled him close. His pupils were saucers that could swallow the moon, should saucers choose to do such a thing. She kissed him impulsively. “You’re never going to get anywhere with all your talking,” she said, flashing him a quick smile before wandering off-stage.

  Dionysus nodded, and looked over at Jesus. She was unplugging her gear. Loki was talking to a woman with a crossbow.

  In a fluid movement, Lilith swept down on the girls who had flocked her during the show, and seemed to propel them past the makeshift stage. “This party’s beat,” she called after the band. “Let’s go!”

  Loki was stunned. “With this much energy... Can’t just leave it lying around. We’ve gotta do something with it.”

  Lilith shrugged. “I’ve had my fill. Come on. I know where we should all go. Four stars, hot tub. Trust me.”

  Dionysus perked up. “Hot tub?”

  Loki gave a nod to the breakdown crew, who immediately jumped into action. The party continued on madly, ignorant of the band slipping out the door.

  From buses to dorm rooms, across the screens of cell-phones, laptops, and flat-panels, the show and ensuing chaos broadcast through the minds of a dormant, desperate populace.

  Chapter Four

  “You having fun yet, you dour son-of-a-bitch? There was a time that you weren’t so dour,” Lilith said to Loki. She was stretched out in the passenger seat, one of the girls sitting on her lap sucking a lollipop. She was porcelain white, a pin-cushion of piercings.

  “It’s still sinking in. You have any idea what you’ve done, here? Fugitives to guerrilla rock demagogues in what? Several weeks?”

  “Sounds like fun to me,” she said. They kept passing that lollipop back and forth, not breaking eye contact.

  “I’m starting to see that, yeah,” he said.

  “No plan, though. That’s your job.” She smiled.

  Loki nodded, making a mental note to start chain smoking in no more than 30 seconds. The challenge thrilled him, even if it made him anxious as fuck trying to keep this band of nutcases out of jail, or worse.

  “What’s your name?” the girl on Lilith’s lap asked.

  “Loki.”

  “I’m Amber.”

  Lilith interrupted by shoving her tongue down Amber’s throat. OK, then, Loki thought. He felt a rumble in his chest and instinctively swerved into the other lane. A wildly careening sedan shot past, its sub-woofers rattling the equipment.

  “Fucking savages!” he screamed out the window before accelerating and changing lanes again, the bulk of the Behemoth forcing them onto the shoulder. He thought he heard the sound of guard-rail shrieking against paint-job as he shot away. Now he was having fun.

  He caught an image in the rear view, lit vividly but momentarily by passing headlights. A strip of a disembodied, shapely leg, wreathed in red fishnet. Probably the girl Lilith had introduced as Ariadne. She was elfin, even tiny, but perfectly proportioned and far from frail. He didn’t have a read on her yet. Mary, another who had joined their group, had long dark hair and charcoal eyes. One of those quiet, watching types. Could be in MENSA or special-ed, for all he knew.

  The group in the back were sitting in a circle, passing around a hookah that let out great clouds of hash and opium smoke. Cody was silhouetted behind them as he leaned against the window, clearly drunk, strumming on his guitar. Some experimental Italian film was playing on the large screen monitor with the sound shut off.

  “Semiotic invisibility?” Dionysus was saying. “Really, it’s just a matter of misdirection and sorting. What use you are sorting for.”

  “Sorting?” Jesus asked pointlessly, letting out a great deal of smoke at the same time.

  “Oh, sure. If you’re looking for a drink, you go to the guy behind the bar, not the introvert in the corner. It’s an old trick. Mismatch. You're not the droids they're looking for. Conform to expectation. When they retell the story, you’re not there.”

  Ariadne shook her head at him disparagingly, her bob cut bouncing to and fro, but she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “I can dig it,” Jesus said, not really paying attention. Mary was oiling her feet.

  Loki tossed cigarette number two out the window.

  “It’s really–” Dionysus started.

  Loki cut in. “–OK, I’m sorry. I gotta ask. You are drowning in pussy back there, and you want to talk about ‘invisibility’ and ‘sorting’?”

  “Well. Yeah. Why?”

  Ariadne scowled. “Excuse me, I’m not ‘pussy.’”

  “Don’t take it personally,” Dionysus said. “Loki 1.0 runs software programmed in an object-oriented language. It undervalues subjective things like emotions or self-consciousness.”

  Loki laughed and shook his head. There must be some reason why he liked that bastard so much. But what he said was, “Consciousness is post-hoc.”

  “Post-hoc ergo propter-hoc!” Dionysus screamed back.

  “Oh shut up, you don’t even know Latin.”

  “Sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re talking about, but where are we going, anyway?” Artemis asked. She sat poised like she thought she was Le Femme Nikita, one hand on her crossbow. That girl was a specia
l sort. Introduced herself as part of the “security detail” at the show. When Loki jokingly asked for her credentials, she showed him her crossbow. Which made her crazy cause she could use it, or crazy cause she couldn’t. Either way...

  “A hotel,” Lilith said, putting Amber’s lollipop back in her mouth. “I put it in the GPS already. You’re going to love it!”

  “How are we paying for this little venture?” Loki asked.

  “Paying? Are you joking?”

  Loki nodded. “I’m starting to like you, kid.”

  The Behemoth pulled into a gas station, belching out clouds of exhaust. They all stepped into the night air, stretching their legs and blinking in the harsh glow of the lamps set in the overhang above the pumps. (All except Cody, who had passed out face-down on his guitar after loudly declaring, “Nap time.”)

  Loki shook his head. “$4.96 a gallon. Jesus Christ.”

  The rest of them sauntered inside as he fueled the monster. A long line of fashion victims, methed-out truckers, nervous businessmen and suburban housewives trailed from the counter all the way to the back of the store, where there was a rusted metal box endlessly rotating shriveled meat turds. Against this core sample of American nightlife, they stood out. Jesus was way in the fore, seven feet tall in her platforms and wearing a long pleated leather skirt.

  “Whew,” Jesus said loudly. “After an orgy like that one, I sure could use a hot tub.”

  The rest of the line went dead silent.

  The final stop of the evening was an incredibly overpriced hotel.

  A valet approached them uncertainly.

  “Leave the keys in the...uh...truck?”

  “The fuck I will. Just tell me where to park,” Loki said.

  The side-door opened, and the valet’s jaw followed suit.

  The hotel doors glide, Loki marveled. That was how he knew the place was worth $500 a night. The lobby was ultra-modern and all the furniture looked like it was designed by Escher.